


Wuthering Nights

by KateThorne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Demon Blood Addiction, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:36:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KateThorne/pseuds/KateThorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's life after Dean's death was too hard to fathom, so he took a leaf out of his brother's book and decided to self-destruct. Gabriel was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time that Gabriel laid eyes on Sam Winchester, he was thoroughly unimpressed.

Really? The apocalypse was going to come down to these two? Heaven and Hell must have been losing their edge because this was just too easy. Throw in a couple of flat tires and a porn virus and the brothers were ready to bite each other's head off. If only Lucifer were already topside, they could have this over and done with already. The end of the world, the war of all wars, and it could all be done before the evening news.

In fact, if Gabriel had been told, at that moment, to pick which man he would end up loving, saving and dying for, hands down it would have been the older one with the sense of humor, not the tightly wound youngest.

But, hey, life is funny like that.

*******

The second time that Gabriel saw the Winchesters was when he was making little Sam Winchester (figuratively speaking, of course) run in frantic circles as his big brother died over and over. A precursor, of course to when Dean would die in a few months time. Well, die for a little while. Gabriel knew that Michael wouldn't leave him to stew down there for long. But, Sam didn't know that. Sam didn't know that when his brother died, truly died, it would be at his hand. Or vice versa. Either way, one was going to be all alone. As Cain killed Abel, one would kill his brother.

Why wasn't it as fun as it should have been? C'mon, how about that time that Dean got crushed by a piano? Brilliant. That was simply brilliant.

But Sam wasn't getting it. Wasn't he supposed to be the smart one of the two? Why was he so stupid when it came to Dean? He knew what was coming. He knew he couldn't stop it. He knew it would just start over, all over again. But he cried every single time. His heart broke, his world ended, he grieved every single time.

"You can't save your brother," said Gabriel, as Sam held him to the chain link fence, hot fury rolling off him in waves, his big hand in Gabriel's chest, "No matter what."

The next day was Wednesday, and Dean got shot in the parking lot. And Sam still didn't give up. Sam still didn't stop pining for his brother. He stopped eating. He stopped talking to his friends. He stopped sleeping. But he never stopped missing Dean.

Something snapped in Sam. Something terrifying, and man, could Gabriel see it. Ruthless, cutthroat, unfeeling, Winchester was Lucifer's vessel, no doubt about it.

Gabriel should have been happy. Finally finally it was almost over.

"Bring him back," whispered Sam, looking down at Gabriel, "Bring us back to that Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Whatever you want. We won't come after you. I promise."

"Sam." Said Gabriel,exasperated" There's a lesson here that I've been trying to drill into that freakish Cro-Magnon skull of yours. This obsession to save Dean? The way you two keep sacrificing yourselves for each other? Nothing good comes out of it. Just blood and pain."

"He's my brother." Said Sam, "Please. Just… I'll do anything. Please."

Gabriel rolled his eyes at Sam's inability to comprehend. You couldn't fight destiny. You just couldn't. Brothers die. Brothers die and then they're dead and you just have to fucking let it happen. Why did Sam seem to think he didn't have to play by those rules?

"Anything?" Asked Gabriel with a smirk, "Clearly you don't hear enough prison jokes to know that you don't just make that kind of offer to someone and not expect to suck someone's dick."

"Is that-? Would you bring him back if I?"

Gabriel had been joking, truly, he had. But Sam's eyes lit up so hopefully that it was pathetic. As Sam stopped and thought about what he had just offered his eyes fell unconsciously to Gabriel's crotch which gave a little twitch to the sudden image of Sam on his knees, sucking him as desperately as though his life depended on it. It was seedy and depraved and disgusting, but Gabriel couldn't help but admit that it was also really fucking hot.

Gabriel was more than his vessel, infinitely more, but Sam Winchester was just so big and muscled, because having those eyes, those dimples and being that naturally tall just wasn't enough. He had to be ripped too. He had to be fucking beautiful. Like Lucifer had been.

And Gabriel had never made any allusions to being a decent fellow.

Gabriel lilted his eyebrow at Sam. He wasn't about to say no to a blow job. He still wouldn't bring Dean back, but he could tell Sam that after he shot his load. The little twitch had grown into a half hard on, poking hopefully forward through his pants.

Sam swallowed air and took a long legged step towards him, still looking down at Gabriel's crotch, not at him. He took a final, shuddering breath and dropped to his knees with all the tension of a man diving into an ice cold lake. Nervous hands started fumbling with Gabriel's pants and Sam kept his eyes religiously on his task, even as they glazed over, obviously imagining himself somewhere else.

Perhaps thinking about his brother and all the things he would do for him. Die for him. Kill for him. Suck a cock for him.

All that for a million more Tuesdays of watching Dean die, if only to wake up and repeat the task over again. Even to only have Dean for a few more months until the Hellhounds finally came knocking.

"Ok, stop." Said Gabriel, rolling his eyes as Sam nervously eyed his now free (and hard) member. "If you can't suck it up and swallow a cock like a man, don't even insult me by trying."

"No, I swear, I'm sorry, I'll be better… I've never… Tell me what to do, I'll do it. I'll do whatever you—"

But Gabriel rolled his eyes again and pushed Sam back away from him, a little satisfied that his angel strength made the big man wobble on his knees and finally fall hard on his ass. Gabriel tucked himself back into his pants and for the first time since Sam had dropped to his knees he was looking at Gabriel, really looking at him.

Confused, scared, desperate.

"Just, whatever. You're off the hook." Said Gabriel, turning away from Sam Winchester, "All this stopped being fun months ago anyways."

"Are you sur—"

"Just go, kid. Go spend time with your brother."

Gabriel snapped his fingers before Sam had a chance to respond sending Sam back six months to his brother. Sending him back to his brother that he couldn't save. Back to his brother that he never stopped fighting for.

Sam Winchester would rewrite history, alter Heaven and Hell, fight until his last breath for his family. Gabriel had given up on his. What the fuck made Sam think he was so damn special? That he and his brother were in some sort of exclusive club that didn't have to die or kill or follow destiny, bloody as it was? Sam was just a human.

Why did Sam get to save his brother, when Gabriel was helpless to save his own?

*****

Sam Winchester had been a man obsessed.

Losing Dean was too hard to fathom. He had clutched his brother's dying body but he never woke up. That stupid Asia song never played and Sam had to pack up the car without Dean. He had to drive away without Dean. He had to hunt without him, and fight without him and live without Dean next to him, always standing next to him, no matter what.

It was just too hard to think about.

But what Sam could think about was a cocky thin lipped smirk. Golden brown hair and a smart mouthed demigod. He could think about how good it would feel to stab him, crush skin and rib and heart in a single strike. Just like his father before him, Sam was single minded in his pursuit of it. The thing that took Dean.

Healthy coping mechanisms were not the Winchester way. Violence was.

Sam didn't listen to the silence, deafening now that Dean's music was gone. Sam didn't feel the empty Impala as he drove, now that Dean wasn't banging the steering wheel in beat with whatever song was playing. Whenever Sam got even marginally close to missing Dean, he thought about a golden eyed Trickster and he thought about revenge.

The thoughts started to invade his dreams. They had started out as perfectly ordinary and satisfyingly violent. Sam and Dean followed the Trickster out of the diner and Sam pinned him to the fence.

And this time, in his dream, he hit him. Fists and hands against him, beating the sneering smile bloody. Throwing the Trickster to the ground, shoving, hitting, hurting. Biting to rip and to maim, wild like an animal.

The dreams were easily chalked up to the release of his primal temper. In real life, Sam had to be smart. Sam had to track the thing like a hunter, not a maniac, even if that was all he felt inside.

Then the dreams took a turn.

He was still hitting and hurting. He was still throwing the Trickster against the fence, pulling, shoving, maiming, biting.

Then he was biting lips. Then he was shoving hips against hips. Then, in the fluid, illogical way that dreams are wont to do, he was in the middle of hitting the Trickster when, instead of the alley with Dean, Sam was alone in the dark with the golden eyed and haired monster.

It was the same violent fury, but he was no longer looking down at the Trickster's impossible grin, despite the blood on his lips. Sam was looking down at a man's naked back, watching them joined together. He had a handful of hair in one hand and a warm hip in the other as he fucked him.

Sam didn't dwell on it. He had never had dreams about doing that to a man before. He never had dreams about having sex, albeit violent sex, with a monster. But then, Sam had never had to live without Dean before.

In the grand scheme of all the things that Sam had never done before, gay sex dreams were the least of his worries. Besides, he was still the top. Perhaps it was just a continuation of his primal need for control over the Trickster. He couldn't just beat him. He needed to rape him.

And then Dean was back. The silence was gone, the loneliness was gone. Hunting was no longer solitary and obsessively single minded, but planned and executed as a team, punctuated by "Jerk" and "Bitch." It was right and natural and Sam had returned to his big brother's shotgun.

And the dreams were gone. Mostly.

He and Dean were watching T.V. while they ate their take out Thai food for dinner. A cheap and cheesey local commercial came on; a used car salesman was telling them all about his great selection and crazy low prices. His eyes weren't goldish brown, but the hair was close enough. More than anything, though, it was the cruel little smirk, like he was laughing at a very good joke at the world's expense.

And Sam didn't get a little twitch of arousal, quickly come and gone. Sam got a full salute, tent pitching boner that didn't disappear when the commercial did. Or the one after that. All Sam saw was a knowing grin. A lilting eyebrow looking down at him from where Sam was on his knees.

"Oh, shit," said Sam quickly, pretending to spill his cashew tofu onto his lap. He stood and turned, pantomiming frustration at his stained clothing, his back to Dean. Dean barely bothered to look up at him, still chewing his dinner. He said "klutz" or "spaz" or some kind of monosyllabic epithet about Sam's clumsiness and then returned his full attention to the television.

Sam stepped into the bathroom and leaned against the sink, his relentless need throbbing, almost teasingly in his pants. It was almost like the Trickster was there in his dick, smiling knowingly at his little problem. "Can't get rid of me, can you?" it laughed, "Can't stop thinking of me, can you?"

"Fuck fuck fuck." Sam said quietly to himself. Once Dean had come back, things had returned to normal. Was this some sort of kick back from his six month long obsession with all things Trickster?

Sam turned on the shower and stripped from his clothes as he stepped in. It was a warm shower and Sam thought, abstractly, that this was the first time he consciously felt something down there since Dean had come back. It deserved reward. He was just going to conveniently ignore why it showed up there in the first place.

So Sam forced his thoughts to blonde hair, long legs, small breasts, slender hips. Sam had always preferred an athletic build on a woman. More fast and small like a sports car than Dean who preferred the busty and curvy softness of a luxury ride.

It was working, sort of. He was still hard but he had been pumping for a few minutes to no avail. Sam masturbated so infrequently that he could usually finish himself off in under a minute. Blonde hair turned brown. The woman, small in his arms, grew a few inches, her shoulders broadened, her jaw sharpened. Breasts disappeared and became replaced with a hard on to match his own, pressed into his stomach.

Oh, come on.

Then came the smirk. Laughing at Sam's inability to get off on his old classics.

Fine. Sam could work with that. He reached into the archives of his mind, searching for that dream where he had a handful of hair and a smooth, vulnerable back laid out before him. Pounding, fucking, hurting. Revenge for making him powerless. Revenge for making Sam the butt of the joke. Harder and harder.

Then he was on his knees and the smirk was still there. Eyebrow lilted as a Trickster he looked down at Sam. The body may have been smaller, but the power was unimaginable. Sam was on his knees, at his mercy, servicing him. He was pumping his head, clutching the Trickster's hips almost possessively as he was worshipping the god.

No thought Sam furiously, but his hand seemed to have other ideas as it sped up. No. This is wrong. Monster, murderer, jerk. He tried to shove the image of the Trickster on his hands and knees back into the forefront of his mind. The Trickster taking his cock. Yielding to his fury.

The Trickster threw his head back as Sam wrapped his lips around him.

Then Sam's mouth was full, he swallowed it down. No thought Sam, That's wrong, it's—

Sam's back arched and his legs locked as he painted the shower floor with his release.  
******

Gabriel walked into the apartment that he had commandeered in Las Vegas. It was in the penthouse of one of the most exclusive hotels in the city, the kind with chandeliers and goose down bedding where there was a full service bar, private Jacuzzi and a breathtaking view of Sin City in all its glory. Modesty was for mortals.

He paused in the middle of the room.

"Well, if it isn't my least favorite thorn in my side." He said into the dark, "How'd you find me?"

"Got wind of a case. See, some guy who owned a strip club liked to get handsy with his girls and then fire them when they started to complain. Got impaled by a stripper pole. Thought it might be you."

"Ah," said Gabriel, nodding, "Good call. Is little Dean going to come out and make a god-kabab out of me?"

Gabriel looked around the room as Sam walked out of the shadowed doorway leading to the bedroom.

"Where's your stake?" asked Gabriel," Going to whip it out last minute? You know how I like surprises."

"Don't have one, came alone."

"Mighty stupid of you, Sam. Now I get the satisfaction of killing you. Would have liked the set," he said wistfully, "but I was never one to look gift horses in the mouth."

"You brought Dean back."

"Yes. Don't make me reconsider. I can send him straight back to Hell with a snap of my fingers."

"Why did you bring Dean back? Why did you let me go?"

Gabriel rolled his eyes and walked over to the hotel bar. He started making himself a martini with four maraschino cherries.

"Well, if you're going to take your sweet time killing me, do you mind if I make a drink? I've had a very tiring day impaling sexist assholes…via their assholes." Gabriel smirked around the rim of his martini glass.

Sam walked towards him, heavy boots under a heavy man against soft, cashmere rugs. Sam put his shotgun on the dining table and closed the distance between him and Gabriel so that only the bar was between them.

"Are you really going to kill me?" Sam asked him softly.

"Depends." Said Gabriel, taking another drink. "Are you going to kill me?" Gabriel wasn't really scared. The odds of Sam finding out who and what he really was were slim, and even if Sam did somehow peg him as an Archangel, not a demigod, it would be impossible for Sam to know how to kill him. Even more impossible for him to get the Archangel blade that he would need to do so.

Gabriel poked into Sam's head to try and figure out what the hunter's game was. Showing up without back up? Showing up without a stake? Gabriel found… affection? Curiosity? Need? A bunch of emotions balled into one as the tall hunter looked down at him.

"Why are you here?"

"You're not so bad."

"Do not try to presume what I am, Sam Winchester, I'm warning you." Gabriel's voice rang with threat and Sam dropped the subject.

He walked around the bar so that he was hovering over the angel, Gabriel's hair under his nose. Sam's hands tentatively reached out and touched Gabriel's arm.

"I told you, kid, you're off the hook." Said Gabriel, but Sam's hands were growing more insistent, more demanding as they gripped his shoulders. Sam took a broken breath, though completely different from the one he had given a few weeks ago when they first got close to this route. He shoved Gabriel against the bar, pinning his hips against the surface with big possessive paws. Gabriel's voice was calm and level as he spoke again, "Don't start something you don't intend to follow through with here."

Sam dropped to his knees and this time he looked right at Gabriel, angling his head up to see him, small, heart shaped mouth glistening after Sam ran his tongue over his lips. When Gabriel just looked back at him, Sam started unzipping his pants.

"What has gotten into you, kid?" asked Gabriel, watching him, "You just suddenly get a craving for some man on man action?"

"I…hunted you."

"Yes, thanks for reminding me. Gets me hard as a rock."

"I was obsessed with you. Your voice. Your face. Your body. I… recorded every moment that I was with you in a journal. I pasted pictures of you along my motel walls. I thought of you when I showered. I thought of you when I ate. I dreamt of you as I slept. And then you brought Dean back and still I… I dreamt of you. I dreamt of what it would be like to go through with what you offered. The first time I got hard after Dean died I was…thinking of you."

" Ah. So, if you hunted me down, sucked me off you thought you might be able to get over it? Some good old fashioned closure? Repaying me for my favor, so it can be over and done with."

"Something like that," said Sam. As he said the words, his hand disappeared into the angel's pants. Gabriel was already hard. He had thought about the hunter too. Pink lips, big hands hard and unyielding fury as he shoved Gabriel against a chain link fence. And now the hunter, the big mountain of a man was on his knees.

Sam pulled the erect dick out from the pants and started working him with his hand, hesitantly. It was obvious that Sam had never held someone else's cock. Sam looked up into Gabriel's eyes, his own hooded and glassy from lust. Sam's tongue peeked out from between his lips and he ran it along Gabriel's shaft.

Gabriel's breath hitched and Sam locked his eyes back on Gabriel's. Sam repeated the gesture, and followed his tongue's slick trail with his hand, giving the same gentle squeeze at the tip that he liked to do to himself. Gabriel started breathing heavily through his nose as he watched. Sam got ready to slide the whole cock in his mouth when Gabriel suddenly realized what have might gotten into the hunter after all.

Tracking him down was no easy feat. It would take months of research. Gabriel usually came and went from a town before the headlines even reached the papers. Sam was a great hunter, but even a great hunter would drive himself mad trying to pin down Gabriel down. Obsessive wouldn't be enough. Sam would need to be desperate to put himself through that. And what did Gabriel know about Sam and what made him desperate?

"Can't save your brother. I can't stop the Hellhounds or the deal." Gabriel said suddenly.

A little bubble in Sam seemed to burst, but Sam didn't stop or turn away. He looked down and nodded.

"I… I figured you probably couldn't." he said softly, "But… that isn't what this is about."

"Sam, your brother is going to—"

"Can we not talk about Dean?" Sam snapped, "I just want to do this. I want to go back to normal, ok? I can't sleep because I dream of… you. So I studied and I tracked and I killed myself to finally find you. Now… I just want to do this so I can go back to Dean. So I can enjoy my last few months with him without you hanging around in the back of my mind. So let's just not talk about Dean and do this."

"You sure know how to make a girl feel special."

Some of that hot fury flashed in Sam's eyes and he started pumping Gabriel in his hand faster. Without much warning, Sam pulled the dick into his mouth. It was almost stubborn, he was proving that he could do this. That he could control these fantasies, this obsession he seemed to have with Gabriel. Whether he was proving it to himself or to Gabriel was impossible to tell.

Gabriel's knees shook as Sam's tongue ran down the sensitive vein in his cock. Sam moved his head, sucking extra firmly as he reached the tip and making up for any lost distance with his hand so that none of Gabriel's dick was unattended. Gabriel gave a little moan as he got closer and Sam moaned in response. The vibrations were what sent Gabriel over, he locked his hand in Sam's hair and shoved himself all the way down the hunter's throat as he released.

No one used Gabriel, he made sure of that.

Sam gagged at the intrusion of a cock against the tender part of his throat more than at the spewing bitter release in his mouth, but as he looked at Gabriel, he knew he would have to take it. And it seemed to turn Sam on.

Once Gabriel felt Sam swallow him all the way down, he shoved the hunter off his dick so that Sam fell on his ass again.

"Satisfied?" Gabriel sneered.

"Not hardly," said Sam and he stood quickly, a well-trained fighter who knew that to stay on the ground was to die. He stood again, menacing over Gabriel.

Sam shoved Gabriel against the bar again and mashed his lips against his mouth. To say that Gabriel was surprised would be an understatement. Sam clearly had something to prove as he sucked him off. Maybe it was some kind of balance thing, finishing off what they had started at the Mystery Spot.

But a kiss was almost intimate. Even in the tooth-scraping tongue-thrusting violent way that Sam was dishing it out.

"I hate you." Snarled Sam, but his hips were rutting up against Gabriel's anyways, "I want to fuck you, but I hate you."

"Hmmm, fuck me?" sneered Gabriel, but through frantic short breaths as the thought sent some new life into his satisfied dick, "A little ambitious, don't you think? You may be bigger," Gabriel lifted a hand to rest against Sam's chest, over his heart. "But I'm stronger and older and you will kneel before me."

Sam groaned and pushed up against Gabriel harder and faster, his erection was searching for release. Gabriel used the hand on his chest and pushed him away, hard, Sam stumbled backwards to the wall, falling against it. In an instant, Gabriel was holding him there, resuming their kiss with as much violence as before.

"I'm going to need you to beg, little Sammy boy." Gabriel murmured, grinning. Sam's eyes flashed at his intimate nickname and went to shove Gabriel back, but Gabriel stayed strong. Gabriel grinned ruthlessly at Sam's desperation. "I want you to beg me to take care of that-" Gabriel's eyes dropped down. "Not so little problem."

"Fuck you."

"Aw. Don't you wish?"

"Fine," said Sam, rolling his eyes. The words left his lips stubbornly, like they had to be dredged up from somewhere far away. Sam was raw and vulnerable to Gabriel and he hated it, that anger was etched across every inch of his face. "Please."

"Please what?"

"Fuck me."

"Hmmm…." Said Gabriel. That was a damn tempting offer as well. "Maybe later, big boy."

Gabriel's eyes locked on Sam's, the corners of his mouth pulling up cruelly at Sam's reluctantly visceral reaction. Gabriel's hand found the zipper of his pants, pulling it down deftly and grabbing Sam's dick before Sam knew what hit him. Gabriel put a few millennia's worth of experience and observations to use, making Sam's back arch against his stomach as hot seed spilled into his hand.

Gabriel cleaned it with a thought and stood straight, stepping away from Sam. Sam stumbled a little as Gabriel's heat and hard body left him against the wall. Sam was looking at the floor, avoiding Gabriel's eyes as he zipped his pants.

At first Gabriel felt a smug sort of satisfaction at his power over the hunter. But that satisfaction turned sticky in his gut as he looked at the youngest vessel. For a fleeting instant, Gabriel wanted to kiss him again. Not mean and harsh like they had before, but gentle.

His father save him, he was going soft.

"Are you done?" asked Gabriel coldly, "Have you proved whatever fucked up thing you needed to prove? Can I go back to my maiming and torturing in peace?"

Sam nodded, his eyes still on the floor.

"Do not come looking for me again." Said Gabriel. "I will kill you."

He snapped his fingers and sent Sam back home to Dean in whatever hole-in-the wall motel the two had stumbled into.

Gabriel stood in his empty apartment.

Alone. Again.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam knew perfectly well who saved him from Lilith at the last minute. Dean was dead, Ruby was gone and Sam was all alone with the demon bitch with white eyes.

It didn't work. Whatever her powers were they didn't work on him. It was comforting for about a half of a minute before she smiled vacantly and looked to the Hellhound that had just devoured his brother's stomach. As Sam followed her gaze, he didn't see a Hellhound, of course, he only saw Dean's open and unseeing dead eyes.

Sam didn't look away. This was how he wanted to die. Next to Dean. Looking at Dean.

He was looking at his brother when he heard Lilith say, "What the hell are you doing he—?"and a flash of white light. Then he heard the yelp of a Hellhound followed by the thud of its invisible body against the ground.

And then it was quiet and Sam still didn't look up at his savior because he guessed who was standing there. 

And he hated him for it.

"C'mon, you big stupid moose." Said the familiar voice, but it was gentle, for once. That was worse, for some reason. Sam didn't want that thing talking to him like he cared.

"No." Sam said. It was petulant but fuck if Sam cared.

"You just going to stay here? Sit in a room and rot away with his corpse?"

"He's my—"

"Yes, he's your brother. He was your brother. Now he's maggot meat. Get up so we can get out of here before that cunt comes back."

"Not without Dean."

"That's not Dean. That's a body."

"THEN NOT WITHOUT HIS BODY," roared Sam suddenly. And he glared up at the Trickster with malice in his eyes. The Trickster dropped his shoulders in defeat and looked sadly at Sam.

"Fine." He said so softly that Sam didn't think he had heard properly. The Trickster dropped to his knees beside Dean's body and held his hand against his unbeating heart.

Dean stayed motionless, but the intestines spilling from his stomach, the gashes along his chest, began to pull themselves back in, stitching the corpse back together. In an instant, Dean was whole again. He was too cold and he was too still, but he was whole again.

"There." Said the Trickster, standing and looking back at Sam. "Good as new. "

Sam's eyes watered as he looked back at his brother, so peaceful in death. Now that the evidence of his bloody last minutes was tucked back inside him, Dean looked so quiet, almost like he could have been sleeping. Passed out in the passenger seat of the Impala on a long drive. Unconscious in a motel bed after he drank himself to sleep.

In death, Dean finally looked at peace like he never had been in life. But Sam needed him. Dean would never leave Sam all alone. Never.

The Trickster held his hand out to Sam to help him up from where he had fallen to the floor.

"C'mon." he said again, "Let's go."

Sam put his hand into the Trickster's and was rewarded with a sad smile. Suddenly, Sam kicked the dresser next to him, the one that got splattered with Dean's blood when the hounds attacked. The dresser broke with a satisfying smash and Sam scooped up one of the many pieces that splintered off. He held a sharp wooden chip to the Trickster's heart.

"Now bring him back. Again."

The Trickster looked calmly down at the slice of wood against his chest and then back up to the wild eyed hunter who held it.

"Can't."

"You can do it." Said Sam, "You've done it before, so no bullshit now. Give me my brother back."

"That was different," said the Trickster in the same level voice, despite the stake that was pressed hard enough into his chest to draw blood, "I had killed Dean, so I had the right to bring him back. I don't hold this contract."

"Bullshit." Snarled Sam, "Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit." But the words grew frantic as it sunk in.

Dean was gone and Sam couldn't bully him back. What was Sam supposed to do now that he was alone?

"Are you done?" the Trickster asked lazily, "Can we please go now?"

"I'm not going anywhere with you." Said Sam, but he dropped the stake. He backed away from the Trickster, towards his brother's body. "I don't want to be your friend."

"No one wants to be my friend," said the Trickster with a strained smile, "That doesn't mean that I can't help."

"Don't need your help." He said, but he was looking down at Dean's lifeless body.

"Clearly." Said the Trickster.

Sam looked up to respond to the Trickster. He still hadn't decided if he was going to tell him to fuck himself or to thank him. He was spared the trouble.

The Trickster was gone

******

Sam reached for the bottle of whiskey again, not bothering to sit all the way up from his position lying on the motel bed. It had been a week since they had buried Dean and Sam was still having a hard time sleeping.

Drinking helped. Drinking was damn near necessary. Sam had been woken by something, he wasn't sure what and didn't really care. It could have been anything from a weird dream to a truck on the nearby highway. It took Sam about ten drinks to get numb enough to sleep, and when it finally came, it was never a deep restful sleep. It was light and uncomfortable and never satisfying.

He grasped air instead of the familiar neck of the bottle. Rolling over to see better, he saw the whiskey just six inches out of his reach.

That was odd. With his eyes on the bottle this time, Sam made another grab for it. This time he saw it; as his arm got close, the bottle moved further away. Sam tried it again, the bottle moved again.

Sam sat up, fully awake now, reaching under his pillow, wrapping his fingers around the cool weapon. The bottle grew impatient and playfully lifted itself off the table and floated around the lamp, the small amount of whiskey left in the bottle splashed loudly against the glass sides, mocking him.

Sam thrust the blood dipped stake into the air around the bottle, making it drop to the floor with a loud smash. Thankfully, the motel in question was a favorite of prostitutes and drug dealers, a little broken glass wouldn't gain undue attention.

"Haha, missed me, idiot," said the Trickster, appearing, cross legged on his bed. That mean smirk was back, eyes shining with untold mirth. In a fast move that betrayed any evidence of his drunkenness, Sam spun and shoved the Trickster onto his back on the bed, thrusting the stake into his chest with enough violent force to pierce the mattress below, sending wads of cotton fluffing into the air. But then suddenly, Sam was no longer pinned over the warm hard body of the Trickster, but cold and empty space.

Sam felt a tap on his shoulder and he turned, stake raised, ready to strike a third and final time when the smaller but stronger grip stopped his hand's trajectory in midair. The fingers tightened and with a small noise of pain, Sam was forced to lower his arm to the Trickster's eye level.

The Trickster easily plied the wood from Sam's fist and, with a wink, made it vanish.

Sam stood, arm still twisted, forcing him to the Trickster's level, but pulsating with rage. Rage that was magnified as he saw the cold sneer on the god's thin lips.

"What are you doing here?" he growled.

"Clearly you were expecting me," said the Trickster, looking to Sam's pillow where he had produced the stake, "I'm flattered."

"What are you doing here?" Sam asked again, no less harshly.

The Trickster released his arm and turned casually around the room, walking back to the bedside table, where another bottle of Whiskey resided. Tracing a finger across the label, he turned with an easy confidence, as if the whole room and everything in it was his.

"Look, I'm as game for a decadent drinking binge as the next demigod, but this has gone from 'Lost Weekend' to a Lifetime movie, so I'm cutting you off." The whiskey bottle under his hand vanished.

"Hey." Snapped Sam as the Trickster ignored him and started poking through some of Sam's other belongings. "I said, 'HEY'" snapped Sam as the Trickster pulled a half empty of vodka from his duffel bag, making the vodka disappear in the same fashion as the whiskey had.

Sam crossed the room and grabbed the bag from the Tickster's hand, throwing it onto the floor. He towered over the demigod. Sam's dream came back to him in a flash, shoving, hitting biting. Alcohol, frustration and fury blended into a wave of motion as Sam shoved the Trickster.

Golden brown eyes peered up at him, unafraid and amused.

Logic told Sam that he should back off. This was something more powerful than he could comprehend and with motives he didn't truly understand.

But logic died when Dean did. Self-worth, right, wrong, all sat cold and stiff in his brother's coffin.

Sam was wrong. If he hadn't been a freak, their mother would still be alive. Dean would have never sold his soul to save him from Azazel. His family might have had a popsicle's chance in Hell of being something close to happy. But, no. Sam ruined everything he loved. Sam broke everything he touched. Jess. Madison. Dean. His mother.

Loving Sam came with an unnaturally high mortality rate.

So what the hell made Sam think that he deserved better than this fucked up thing with the smirking, mocking, mean Trickster next to him?

In less than an instant, Sam pressed his lips against the Trickster's. It was hard and desperate and when the Trickster remained cool as stone beneath his lips, Sam pulled away. He wasn't going to feel embarrassed. Not in front of that.

He stepped away from the Trickster, closer to the bed. He looked at the him for a long minute before resolution settled in his eyes. Sam took off his shirt and felt a little satisfaction as he saw the demigod's pupils widen fractionally. So he wasn't made of stone after all.

"Well," said Sam, with a shrug as his hands found the waistband of his sweatpants, "We might as well get down to the real reason you came." The pants hit the floor and Sam stepped out of them.

"You really think that's the only reason I'm here?" asked the Trickster in a voice that was hard to read,"That all you are to me is a quick fuck?"

"That's all I want to be to you." Sam said simply. The Trickster tilted his head and something he couldn't name flashed in the demigod's eyes before the hard mask fell back in place. It shrugged.

The Trickster eyed him appraisingly from across the room, his chin in his hand as he looked Sam from head to toe. Sam was ripped and cut and toned and he knew it. Living on the road took a lot of options from him. He couldn't have a dog or a girlfriend or a hobby besides killing things that should have stayed dead in the first place.

But his body was his temple. Every crunch, every pushup, every salad he ate was him taking control back from the ghosts and the gouls and all the things that go bump and the night. They could have his future, his friends and his family but his body was his.

And now he was offering it up to the monster before him. Everything he had, he was giving away. The god could either fuck him or kill him and at the moment, Sam welcomed both. What had happened in his life to ever make him think he deserved better?

The Trickster took a step towards Sam cautiously but greed shimmered in his expressive eyes. Sam matched it with a step backwards until legs hit bed. Sam sat on the edge of it. The Trickster took another step forwards and Sam scooted back, making room for him between long toned legs. The Trickster reached the side of the bed and crawled onto it shrugging out of his coat and unbuttoning his shirt with cool ease, licking his lips as he looked over Sam's body. Sam leaned back so that he was on his elbows, watching as the god surveyed him.

He placed a hand on Sam's stomach, running fingers along the hard defined abs and then headed upwards to his chest. Sam's entire body came to life with waves of electric current. His heart sped up and he could feel himself harden as he felt the heat of the Trickster's own clothed crotch nearby.

If he had been a psych major, he could write an entire dissertation on the way his body betrayed him as the thing he hated, the monster that disgusted him could make him hard and hot and needy with a few strokes of his hand. The Trickster scooted up, placing a thigh between Sam's long legs and sliding his clothed dick against Sam's naked one.

Sam moaned and placed his big hands against the Trickster's back, one over his hips to hold him in place as Sam rose up to rediscover the friction. Sam's lips found the smirking pair above his and he resumed their kiss, urgent and needy. Hands resumed their tour of Sam's body, from his waxed chest they found the trail of hair leading to Sam's, now throbbing, cock. Sam felt the grin against his lips as the Trickster's hand wrapped around him and started to move at a sinfully slow pace.

Sam moaned in frustration, bucking his hips to try and increase the speed. Angry sex really only worked if it was hard and fast. This was becoming something else and Sam wasn't sure he liked it. Ok, that was probably the wrong choice of words. He wasn't sure he wanted to like it.

The Trickster's other hand landed on Sam's hip, stilling it.

"So, Sammy," he said in a lyrical voice, "Do you remember what you begged me for the first time I had your cock in my hand?"

"I said I wanted to fuck you," growled Sam.

"Nope, after that." The voice chimed. Sam sat up and gripped the Trickster's face in his hands as he brought them back together in a bruising kiss, biting his lip in repayment for making Sam relive his embarrassingly desperate moment. The Trickster let him break from the kiss, but his shining eyes told Sam that he wasn't off the hook.

"Fuck me." Sam whispered, eyes hooded as the hand on his cock rewarded him and resumed a faster pace.

"I can't hear you, Sammy." The god joked, "I'm very old, you know."

"Fuck me," Sam moaned louder.

"Make the people next door hear you too," challenged the Trickster. Sam wasn't one to back down from a challenge.

"Fuck me!" he yelled.

"Shut up, faggots,"came an irritated response through the thin motel wall. That won a real laugh from the Trickster. For all his teasing and mocking ways, Sam had never heard the Trickster laugh. He had never heard him laugh at a joke with him for once instead of at his expense. Sam smiled too before he remembered what he was doing this with.

They had almost shared a moment and Sam didn't want to share anything more than an orgasm with the monster working his cock.

If the Trickster noticed his weak moment, he didn't show it. He raised an eyebrow as his other hand cupped Sam's balls lightly rolling them and making Sam's toes curl at the sensitive touch, but then, as quickly as it came, the hand dipped lower.

Sam knew what would happen when he took off his clothes and gave his body over to the god. But now there was a hand working its way to a hole that Sam had never, ever in a million years thought about exploring. Now that Sam thought about it though, he couldn't imagine how it would fit. Having held the Trickster's cock on his tongue, Sam was very well acquainted with the size and shape of it. And now...it was going there…

A finger started tracing around his entrance and Sam felt his body spasm with tension. Once again, the Trickster paid his reaction no mind as he continued to finger the sensitive ring. After a moment, Sam relaxed.

He needed to go through with this. He needed to just be fucked by something as wrong as the relentlessly ridiculing god before him. Anyone who took it up the ass for something like the Trickster didn't deserve the unconditional love that Sam had held in his hands and lost. Again. And again. And again. If he had never deserved Jess' love and Dean's love and his mother's love and, hell, he'd say it, his father's love in the first place, it hurt a little less to remember that they were gone.

Gone, gone, gone forever and never coming back for him. He was all alone with his guilt and a monster's cock up his ass fucking him hard and unloving, his penance for all the mistakes of his life, for every minute he took someone he loved for granted.

Sam took a long, deep breath and resigned himself to it, to whatever the god was going to do to him. After a moment, he realized that it was slick. The finger tracing his hole was slick with a lubricant that the Trickster must have applied using his unspoken powers, Sam was so used to sex with women that the logistics of a dry hole and a dry finger never occurred to him. He was a little annoyed at first, he had wanted it to hurt and to chafe and to leave him raw and bloody for days.

But then he was relieved, because for all his self-flagellation, he was scared. And the Trickster was being thoughtful, or perhaps self-serving as always. As Sam considered it, he decided it was probably the latter. Chafing on dick can't have been more pleasurable than chafing on ass and he doubted that the Trickster was as full of self-loathing as Sam was. The god, it was pretty clear, was head over heels in love with himself.

A finger entered and Sam reflexively closed off again. He tried to relax, to think Zen thoughts, maybe utilize some of those Yoga breathing techniques that Dean always gave him so much shit for.

Dean.

He needed to relax so that he could pay for all the times he yelled at Dean for his disgusting food in the fridge or his loud music. All the times that he had taken, taken, taken from Dean when they were younger. Sam had been the baby of the family and had always taken the last of the Lucky Charms, or the best toys. Their father hadn't exactly let them carry around a toy store, but when they were both younger he had tolerated a small clutter of Legos and Hot Wheels.

But whenever Sam would break one or, more likely, lose one in the never ending parade of motel room after motel room, his eyes would water and his face would tighten and their Dad would bark at Dean to share his toys with Sam who would, of course, lose them again. Dean took far better care of his stuff than anyone gave him credit for, even back then. And Sam, without fail, would always find a way to ruin them.

Sam needed to suffer for those moments of childhood selfishness, unrecognized at the time but as clear as day now that they were both grown. Dean had given him everything his whole life. Dean had given Sam his life. Had Sam ever given Dean anything? Anything besides heartbreak and disappointment? Had Sam ever told Dean 'thank you?' Probably. But not nearly often enough.

Sam deserved this.

The finger in his ass started to move and Sam felt his legs lock as a new wave of tension rocked him. It felt weird. That was really the only way to describe it. It didn't hurt that much anymore, just a squirming in someplace that had no business being there.

A second finger joined the first and that one hurt, Sam tried to bite back his hiss of pain. Then, simultaneously, the fingers started to move just as he felt a hot wet swipe of tongue against his still hard cock. The sound he emitted that time was one of surprise. The fingers moved again and Sam felt his whole length being welcomed into a hot mouth, tongue swirling over the head of it. Sam moaned and looked down his body to see golden brown eyes watching him, cheeks hollowed and that normally sneering mouth wrapped into an 'o' around his dick.

Fuck. It was nothing short of a miracle that he didn't come right then.

Relentlessly pumping, the mouth found every crevice, nook and sensitive cranny of Sam's cock and worked it with precision. A flat tongue against the mushroom top of his member and Sam's leg's started to lock again, but for an entirely different reason than before.

Sam didn't even feel the third finger go in, but when those probing fingers found a bundle of sensitive nerves inside him, Sam yelled out. He felt is balls tighten and he looked down the length of his body to the sight on his cock again. He wanted to watch the demigod swallow him like it had forced him to.

But the Trickster held the base of his cock, staving off his orgasm, grinning in a familiar and mischievous way, ignoring Sam's grumble of protest.

The Trickster sat up and Sam felt the head of something bigger and more insistent than fingers at his wet entrance. An eyebrow lilted again, though this time it was unaccompanied by a smirk. It was a question.

"Yeah," said Sam, "Yeah, I'm ready. Do it, please do it."

A wicked smile graced the Trickster's face at Sam's breathless words. Sam had to bite back a smile of his own and then chastise himself for thinking of it as "their" joke. He and this monster didn't share anything; not jokes, not intimate, knowing smiles. Cocks and come and that was all there was between them.

Of course, he thought all this after the words left his own smirking mouth.

"Fuck me," he moaned.

The Trickster plunged in and Sam felt a shock of pain and something much more surprising than he had expected. Pleasure ripped through him, making him throw his head back and wordlessly mouth encouragement. The Trickster stilled and Sam opened his eyes, meeting those of the demigod.

"Don't stop moving," he whispered, his voice like broken glass, "Keep going. Harder and faster. Jesus Christ, God, yes, please, yes."

The Trickster obliged him and started pounding into him hard. Skin slapping skin in a sinfully carnal rhythm as Sam rode it out. He had wanted it to hurt, to be shameful and cruel so that he could pay for all the wrongs of his life. It was supposed to be punishment, not… this. Not toe curling pleasure. Not with precome dripping from his hard cock, fingers in the sheets, balls tightening as the demigod hit that spot of nerves over and over again.

Sam opened his eyes and met the intensity of those brown ones, so expressive and striking in their color, watching him like a falcon. The Trickster's own shoulders were tense with the act of sex, a thick vein protruded from his neck as he fucked him.

"I'm going to come," murmured Sam. It sounded more intimate than he wanted it to, but the words had left his mouth and he couldn't pull them back in. The Trickster nodded and wrapped his hand around Sam's cock, using the precome to slick it up, the god pumped his dick with a practiced hand. Sam's eyes met the Trickster's again and he let himself come into his fist, spewing white hot ooze across their stomachs.

His bones turned to jelly after his intense orgasm and he watched with lazy eyes as the Trickster got closer to his own finish.

When he would look back on that moment for a long time after, Sam would blame the fact that he was still half drunk and high from a climax for what he did next.

He reached up from his spot on the bed, his long arm and the Trickster's shorter torso making it an easy journey, and cupped a palm against the Trickster's face, running his thumb along the cheekbone. He quickly withdrew his hand as he realized what he had done.

The Trickster crinkled his brow at Sam's intimacy but didn't comment on it. It would have been a perfect opportunity for a mean joke or a harsh word, but the Trickster just let a wave of confusion taint his features before his jaw went slack and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he released, hard, into Sam.

Sam felt tired for the first time in weeks as the Trickster collapsed against him, his sticky mess of come had vanished, another of the demigod's convenient housekeeping powers. The drowsy haze was the reason that his hands found the god's spine and traced it in a gesture of post coital tenderness. Once again, he realized what he was doing and dropped his hands off the warm body against his, forcing them still beside himself.

His body was craving intimacy from the thing he was supposed to hate. He thought it would be easier to hate himself and his fuck partner now that it was over. Instead his fingers sought comfort in wrong flesh and his body found release in the hand of something they hunted.

He hadn't been able to give Dean anything in life and now, in death, Sam was still letting his big brother down. He couldn't even abuse himself properly.

Those were his last thoughts as he drifted off into the first non-whiskey soaked sleep he'd had since his brother died.

*********

Gabriel had intended to slide off Sam the second that he came, but the hot flesh was so welcoming and they had fit together so well. As he moved away, a sleepy hand grabbed his back, begging him for something that Sam would never consciously do.

And then Sam's fingers found a route down his skin that he didn't even know was there. A tingle down his spine that warmed his belly, not his cock, washing him in a soft feeling of comfort that didn't disappear when the fingers did.

Gabriel wasn't stupid. He knew that humans got hit with happy brain chemicals after they achieved orgasm, as his father created it. He just hadn't expected sad eyes looking up at him. He hadn't expected a soft hand on his cheek.

Sam Winchester was drowning in loneliness. If there was anything in the world that Gabriel could relate to, it was loneliness.

Cast out of Heaven and an impostor among gods, Gabriel faced the world alone. His own species couldn't look upon him without disgust or malice. He rebelled. He ran away and he hid as the war was coming. He was a coward and a traitor to them and they would kill him as quickly as they laid eyes on him.

And the other gods? Well, the Judeo Christian God wasn't exactly popular among the pagan set. They'd claim him as a spy or a rat and he'd be killed at the hands of his best friends. All the wrath of all the god's in the world raining down on him.

He had to pretend to be someone he wasn't all the time. It was exhausting and hard and sad and Gabriel hated it, but what choice did he have? Gabriel was a coward and he would be killed for it. The only question was; would it be at the hand of a brother or a friend?

Sam's breathing slowed and Gabriel looked down at the human beneath him.

Sam never pretended. Maybe he should and maybe he tried, but the human wore his tender little heart on his sleeve. Eyes looking out at the world for someone to save or someone to love. As he was beautiful, he saw beauty and left it in his wake. They took his mother, he still loved. They took his lover, he still loved. They took a father and then a second lover and then finally a brother and the man still reached up and stroked a finger down someone's cheek. He was still hungry for something intimate and loving, even if he didn't know it yet. His body was betraying whatever sort of self-destructive road his guilt was putting him on.

The hand stayed firmly against Gabriel's back, locking him there. Gabriel could have broken the grip easily. A sleeping lover's embrace against one of the four archangels of Heaven? No contest.

But with those fingers, Sam's body was pleading, "Stay. Don't leave me alone again."

And Gabriel, for all his age and powers of Heaven, didn't stand a chance against that.


	3. Chapter 3

The first time he did it, even he couldn't exactly say what it was that he was thinking. Gabriel had simply let his mind wander in his natural celestial state and wound up in Sam's room as he was cleaning his guns. Laid out on the bed beside him, Sam worked in silence with utmost focus on the metal in his grip.

If anything was terrifying and exciting about Sam Winchester it was his laser focus on whatever miniscule task was in his hand, be it cleaning a gun or tracking a monster. Gabriel had an almost relentless desire to focus Sam's attention on something much more carnal.

"You, pants off. Now." Gabriel barked as he appeared in Sam's room. Sam jumped as he heard the voice but dropped the gun back on the bed as he turned and took Gabriel in.

"Hello to you too. What are you doing here this time?" asked Sam coldly, but he slid the jeans off his legs without hesitation.

Gabriel grinned and shrugged. His coat and shirt were sliding off of his body with an almost supernatural speed. He slinked across the room like a panther with his eyes on his prey, taking in the body of the man before him. Despite the fact that he had seen plenty of it before, Gabriel marveled at his beauty. Gabriel had met Adonis himself and he paled in comparison to Sam Winchester. He lacked the dimples, the splash of boyish cuteness to perfectly contrast the large and strong frame of a man. Gabriel felt another relentless desire to see those dimples again.

"Well, when you give a mouse a cookie." He said, his eyes glinting, "When you give a trickster a hot piece of ass. You can't give me an inch, little Sammy. I'll take a mile."

Sam rolled his eyes, but it was interrupted by his tee shirt's journey over his head. It was tossed across the room and Sam sat naked before him. Gabriel could lose his mind in that moment, Sam open and naked to him. He stripped his pants and crawled over Sam, straddling his hips. Sam laid flat on his back, watching him warily, following Gabriel's fingers with his eyes as they toured his chest and stomach.

"You can tell me to stop," Gabriel said softly. He hated the words, the doubt that bled through them. Gabriel never doubted anything. If someone didn't want him as a friend and a sexual partner, Gabriel could laugh about it and tell them to fuck themselves before vanishing. He had never cared before. He was an archangel and any human would be so lucky to have him in their bed. Gabriel forced the hard and teasing note back into his voice, "You're real cute, I'll give you that. But no skin off my back if you and your tight little asshole are closed for business."

Sam swallowed hard and then lifted his hand again, cupping his palm against Gabriel's cheek and running his thumb along his cheekbone. He was awake and sober this time. There was no excuse for it.

Sam seemed to realize this too as he turned his head away from Gabriel and looked at the wall as he nodded. Sam wasn't done hating himself, but at least he liked himself enough to not want to look at Gabriel while he did it.

That stung Gabriel somewhere deep in his gut that he thought had died. He thought he had killed it himself. That little part of him that craved love. That little part of him that told him he could have it, even if his entire family thought he was the worst scum of his race. So Gabriel smashed that little part of himself down again and slid off of Sam's lap.

Sam looked up at him, hazel eyes glassed over, brow pulled into an unspoken question.

"Hands and knees." Gabriel ordered. Sam let out a shaky breath and nodded before hastening to obey. Gabriel pressed himself behind Sam and ran one hand down Sam's exposed spine while the other ran up the back of his thigh to Sam's tight entrance. A finger breached the barrier, carefully coated in lubricant, and Sam shuddered. "Still tight, just like I remembered."

Gabriel slid the second finger in, earning a grunt of pain from the general direction of back of Sam's head. Gabriel stilled.

"Do it." Said Sam, through gritted teeth, "You can fuck me. I want you to fuck me so just do it."

"Is that Shakespeare?" smirked Gabriel as he began to move his fingers back and forth, stretching Sam open before him.

"I still hate you." Said Sam, almost as if he was reminding Gabriel. There was that little sting in Gabriel's gut again. Gabriel crushed it. Again.

"Fine by me," Gabriel said coolly. And perhaps a little earlier than he should have, Gabriel shoved himself into Sam's tight hole. Sam yelled out, bunching the sheets into a tight fist.

"Good, it's good, so good, keep going. Harder." Sam panted through a clenched jaw.

Gabriel placed one hand on Sam's shoulder as leverage as he shoved as far in as physically possible, pressing his balls to Sam's firm ass. He pulled almost all the way out and shoved in again, making Sam's elbows shake with the force of his thrusts. But Sam was getting off on it. He silently nodded his head, his eyes closed as he lost himself in the pain and pleasure.

Gabriel wasn't about to question it. He probably wouldn't get an answer he liked anyways, so he kept on slamming into Sam with all the force he could muster without breaking the human's hip. Gabriel could feel himself coming close to his finish.

"I'm coming," Gabriel murmured. Sam nodded and pushed his ass back onto Gabriel, meeting his rhythm halfway. Sam's own head was nestled between his arms as he was fucked.

"Do it," Sam said again.

"Do what, Sammy?" Sam grunted in protest at Gabriel's use of his nickname, but he was too far gone to do anything about it. Gabriel grinned and reached forward, holding Sam's chin and tilting his head so that Gabriel could talk in his ear, "Put that filthy little mouth to work."

"Come. I want you to come," said Sam, speaking in a longing moan as Gabriel manhandled him.

"You want me to come in your little ass?"

"Yes, please, I want you to." Sam said with breathless need.

"Say it."

"Please come in my ass." Sam begged and Gabriel released his chin, placing his hand back on Sam's shoulder as he resumed his pounding. "Please come in my ass," Sam said again.

Suddenly, Gabriel pulled out and used the hand anchored on Sam's shoulder to flip him onto his back. The element of surprise and Gabriel's inhuman strength had Sam's features contorted in awe and confusion as he looked up at the god.

"I'm coming," Gabriel said again with a mean smirk. Sam, clever boy that he was, realized what Gabriel was going to do a minute before it happened.

"Do it," murmured Sam, looking lecherously up at him. Gabriel felt his body lock as he released onto Sam's stomach and chest, painting his statuesque body with vulgar semen.

And Sam closed his eyes in ecstasy as he was defiled.

Gabriel ran his fingers across Sam's chest smearing his come across ridges and ripples of muscle. His hand drifted downwards and found Sam's cock, proudly erect and leaking precome from its lack of attention. Gabriel remedied this with a gentle stroke from base to tip, using his own slippery release to lubricate it. When he looked up to his partner's face, Sam's pupils were blown focused entirely on him. Gabriel grinned and slid his tongue quickly across the top of Sam's cock. Sam moaned and bit his lip.

"Go ahead," said Gabriel, in a dangerously quiet tone, "Go ahead and say it."

"Suck me." Mumbled Sam.

"Sorry, what was that?" Sam rolled his eyes and Gabriel grinned again. When Sam didn't repeat himself, Gabriel stopped stroking him and Sam growled. Something cruel and vicious flashed behind the hunter's gaze and Sam sat forward, catching even Gabriel unaware.

Sam's hand locked behind Gabriel's head he suddenly forced Gabriel's face back to his dick. Gabriel let him, of course. If he didn't want to, he could have broken Sam's wrist for even trying.

"I said, 'suck my dick.'" He ordered.

"Ask and you shall receive." Said Gabriel, grinning wickedly before lowering his head enough to slide Sam into his mouth. Sam kept his hand in Gabriel's hair, his fingers forming into a fist, clutching a handful of brown strands. Gabriel's skilled ministrations were ultimately ignored as Sam's hand pulled on his hair, holding his head still.

Then Sam was pumping into his mouth, hard and furious. The way Sam was face fucking him would make a human gag, but Gabriel tolerated it. Gabriel's head was shoved forward, so that Sam's whole cock was in his mouth and Sam held his head there. Then, almost as an afterthought, Sam relaxed his grip and said, in that accidentally intimate voice again, "I'm going to come," as a warning. Sam dropped his hand from Gabriel's head, giving him the opportunity to pull away.

Instead, Gabriel's lips formed as much of a smile as could be managed around a cock and he swallowed around the tip, causing Sam's back to spasm as he came hard down his throat. Sam's eyes were wide with amused surprise as he watched Gabriel drink him down, never breaking from his gaze.

Finally, Gabriel sat up and licked his lips, grinning at Sam, spread out on the bed as though he had just run a marathon. The hunter was so big that his feet were in danger of falling off the bed and his arms, stretched out to his sides like wings in flight, touched each of the opposing sides with ease. Not only was he too beautiful for crappy motel rooms, he was simply too big for them.

As Gabriel made to pull away from Sam's legs and retrieve his clothes, a large hand cupped his cheek in a gesture that was fast becoming familiar. The other hand traced down Gabriel's arm and latched with the angel's fingers pulling them towards his mouth. Sam kissed the hand tentatively before guiding Gabriel's head down to his lips.

After a long, and painfully intimate kiss, Sam rolled Gabriel onto the bed beside him, burying his face in the crook of Gabriel's neck.

Neither said a word about it, but in that moment Sam was completely aware of what he was doing, and Gabriel didn't protest.

Gabriel didn't even think he had the ability to crush that little part of him that he had tried to kill over and over. That little part of him that welcomed love and affection like the desert welcomes the rain.

That little part of him that was shamelessly celebrating being locked in Sam Winchester's arms.

That was how intimacy became between the two of them in their (Gabriel cringed to even use the word) relationship. It was always initiated by Sam and was usually fast and done wordlessly, then Sam would roll over or pull away and not look at Gabriel for a few long minutes. It was as though kissing in a way that wasn't biting or fighting for dominance was dirty. It was as though touches to soothe rather than to claim were shameful.

But they happened with increasing frequency as the time went on. Gabriel made a habit of popping into Sam's room or shower or Impala whenever he knew that Sam was alone. The best sex that they ever had was usually when Sam finished a hunt. The second time that Gabriel appeared, Sam had just taken out a werewolf and his adrenaline was pumping so hard that Gabriel could smell it from three states over. In the blink of an eye, Gabriel was sitting in the back seat of the Impala, just as Sam was sliding into the driver's seat.

Sam smiled in a truly terrifying way as he saw Gabriel smirking in the backseat. With more grace than Gabriel ever thought such a big man could manage, Sam was in his space, breathing his air and warming him with his body.

"You've got a lot of nerve," Sam whispered, his eyes lost to dilated pupil from the violence, "Showing up here. I've got a stake in my trunk with your name on it and I just killed a werewolf. I'm on a roll for killing monsters."

"Aw, that's so cute." said Gabriel, "You think I'd let you kill me?"

Sam clenched a fist of Gabriel's hair, jerking his head to the side and exposing his vulnerable neck. Sam took a long sniff of Gabriel's skin before he scraped his teeth along his flesh, finally biting down on Gabriel's shoulder. Gabriel's breath hitched at the sensation and Sam, emboldened, brought Gabriel's hand to the growing bulge in his pants.

"You're gonna suck me off and swallow me down," he demanded. Gabriel's eyes flashed, but he nodded.

When Gabriel was done, Sam kissed his neck and his shoulder where his teeth had left angry red lines, almost as an apology.

"Trickster?" Sam asked suddenly as he and Gabriel were tangled in each other, uncomfortably hot and sweaty after sex, but silently soaking up their mutual guilty pleasure of affection.

Gabriel tensed as Sam's voice broke the silence. Sam was rigid as well. They both sensed that their unspoken agreement to ignore any and all need for tenderness was being breached. To Sam's credit, he was pointedly looking down at the leather seat instead of at the man in his embrace. Gabriel took a great breath before he responded.

"Mortal?"

"What's your real name? What can I call you?" Sam asked. It was another opportunity for a joke. It was a perfect chance to say something flip and mean.

"Loki. You can call me Loki." Said Gabriel. Someone else's name, but he was holding someone else's body and living someone else's life. None of his old identity wanted anything to do with him anyways. Sam mouthed the word silently, as though getting used to it.

"Loki?"

"Human?"

"You can call me Sammy, you know, if you want. I mean, no one else does anymore, so… it might as well be you."

Gabriel was glad that Sam was looking hard at the Impala seat, as though he needed to memorize its every detail, because Gabriel couldn't help but smile along with that little, unidentifiable part of his being that was dancing in victory.

******

"Hey, Loki, now isn't the best time," said Sam as the demigod appeared in his motel room. Loki looked around the room with hard eyes, taking in the old pizza boxes and unmade bed. And that was bed. As in singular.

"Been entertaining, have we?" asked the Trickster in that lyrical voice that Sam recognized to be one to mean he was pissed. Sam uselessly started collecting boxes and wrappers off the floor, though the damage had been done.

"Yeah, and she'll be back soon, so…"

"She?"

Sam looked at the boxes in his hand instead of at the Trickster. They had never discussed this before.

"Her name is Ruby. She's a demon and she helps me. She helps me get strong enough to take down Lilith. I need to take her out. I need to end her, for Dean."

"Ruby, huh? She sounds like a bitch and I want to kill her."

"You haven't exactly offered to help me, so I don't see why you're getting jealous."

"You never asked for my help."

"Yeah, well, I figured you'd say no."

"I would have."

"See? And besides, I need to take her out myself. I need to do it."

"You need to do it or die trying, you mean."

Sam didn't answer and instead walked around the kitchen, putting dirty dishes into the sink. Sam suddenly remembered the same words coming out of his own mouth as he yelled at his father. John Winchester had been reckless. John Winchester had been goddamn suicidal and Sam had always hated him for it.

When their spouse died, normal men moved on. Maybe they relocated to a new town, maybe they got some grief counseling. They didn't pack up and hunt. They didn't make plans for their own death. Sam had always hated when John would cup Dean on the shoulder and tell him to call Pastor Jim if he didn't come back. And he said it so easily, as if he thought about dying all the time. As if he wanted it.

And Sam would get mad because who the fuck does that? Why couldn't John just let it go? Weren't Sam and Dean enough? John would just walk out the door to his death and not even look back. Sam hated his father in those moments, and now, Sam was more like him than he had ever been before.

Yeah, he did want to die. If he took the white eyed cunt with him, all the better. But he wanted it to end with him in the ground. Because now he had Lilith, but what about when she was gone? When revenge was all used up, how could he remember his brother?

Loki could have probably taken Lilith down easily. In fact it was a fight that Sam would want to watch, but Sam needed to be the one with her blood on his hands. Otherwise, what did he have?

Sam felt Loki's eyes drilling holes into his back. He turned to confront them, just to find the god millimeters behind him, smelling his clothes.

"You're fucking her, aren't you?"

"Loki, we aren't a couple, Ok?" Sam said, and he hated the little voice in his head that doubted the words. "I'm straight, remember? And… It isn't like I'm in love with her or anything. It just happened. It just kind of goes with the…"

"Ah, the blood thing. I knew there was something different." Said Loki, acting completely unsurprised. "So, I've been replaced by a demon. And just some stupid slut of a common demon as well."

"I wasn't yours, Loki and I never was so drop it."

Sam felt the edge of the counter bite into his back as Loki pushed him against it. He looked down to see the vicious amber eyes glaring at him in a way that told him to run for the hills. Instead, Sam glared back.

"You're mine if I say you are." Loki growled at him, "And you would be so lucky if I did."

"Thanks for all your help," said Sam softly, "Thank you so much for everything you've done for me."

It was different now, it was kinder and softer and sadder. Sam had never been like that to Loki before and now it dawned on him as clear as day. He had stopped hating the Trickster a while ago. Somewhere between kisses and touches, they had stopped sharing only come and started sharing moments.

Or, perhaps they always had and Sam had simply been stubbornly in denial of it. The latter was probably the most likely. That flash of something every time that Sam said he hated him. The sad smile as Loki helped Sam to his feet after healing his brother's corpse. Loki letting Sam crush their bodies together as he fell asleep. Sam had stopped hating the Trickster a long, long time ago.

"I love you, Loki." Said Sam suddenly. And Loki's eyes widened in absolute shock. Sam couldn't have caught him off guard more if he tried. His father would disown him for falling into the arms of a monster, Dean would hate him for drinking Ruby's blood to strengthen his psychic powers. Sam had given up trying to do whatever the memories of his father and brother would want. He was always a fuck up to them in life, why change now? But, fuck up or not, Sam loved the Trickster. That was stupid and wrong but stupid and wrong was how Sam was doing everything these days. And Sam loved him, loved who he was when the Trickster was looking. So he needed to stop, he needed to get back to work, his mind back on task, because he had a demon to kill and a brother to avenge. "I love you, Loki. So I think… I think you should go and not see me anymore. I've got to focus on this, now."

"You're breaking up with me?" asked the Trickster, his voice numb with shock, "You, stupid, weak, self-destructive human are breaking up with me?"

Loki looked like he wanted to say something else when the sound of a card key in the door caused him to freeze and look towards the source of the noise. Sam followed his gaze and saw Ruby's brown hair peek in through the door as she juggled a bag of fast food and beer while trying to fumble her way in.

When Sam looked back down to where Loki was standing, the Trickster was gone. And Sam felt even more hollow than he had before.

That was really saying something.

*******

Gabriel was pissed and hurt and lost and most of all confused.

He had figured that Sam had softened towards him after weeks and weeks of sex and kissing and touching, but love?

Luckily, Gabriel didn't have to beat down that bone in his body, roughly near his appendix if he had to guess, that was dancing the cha cha and repeating 'love love love!" The memory of Sam's voice saying that he should go and never come back did it for him. Yeah, the big moose of a man loved him. He also never wanted to see him again. Contradictory asshole.

Mostly, Gabriel was pissed at himself. He had known from day one that there would be a Ruby. It had practically been a nursery rhyme in his head, "And then will come the demon and she will tempt the youngest and the most beautiful of the brothers Winchester into committing her master's deeds. He will break the final seal with the blood of the first demon and He, the most beautiful of the archangels, will walk the Earth again."

Gabriel had known that once Dean died and was sent to Hell, just to be raised again, the dominoes would start to fall. One after the other, each signifying another even in the long and bloody process of his kin tearing each other apart.

He was so stupid for falling in love, yeah, love, with a domino.

He loved Sam. Loved, loved, loved that stupid, sexy, stubborn, perfect and yet impossibly flawed human. He loved his brothers. Gabriel must have been a masochist, because everyone he loved seemed to have blood in their future. Everyone he loved was doomed and he couldn't do anything about any of it. He just had to sit and wait for his heart to be broken and for his world to fall apart.

He just wanted it to be over already.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam rubbed his hands together again for warmth. Or, at least, it had started out as a search for warmth but quickly turned into a nervous and impatient tick. He got up and paced feverishly around the motel room. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. He was so screwed up. He resisted the ever constant urge to slam a fist into something and instead settled for rubbing his hands together, again.

He spun around to face the door as he heard it open behind him.

"Ruby?" he asked, hopefully. Desperately.

"Try again." Said a taller and familiar tone that might as well have broken Sam's heart.

"Loki?"

"I know, I look great. Let's skip the awkward ex small talk, shall we?" Loki looked around the room, "So, no Dean then? You spent so much time and energy trying to get him back and now you take whatever opportunity you can get to sneak away. You're a shoo in for that brother of the year award."

"Dean, ah, Dean doesn't need to see me like this." Said Sam, rubbing his hands together. Loki looked him up and down with scrutiny.

"How long has it been since you last got your hit?"

"A few days."

"You're this bad after a few _days_?" he asked, wrinkling his nose in disgust, "What did that bitch do to you, Sammy?" Sam looked away and smiled at Loki's use of his nickname. A name, a familiarity that Sam had given him. An intimacy that Sam had given the god back when Sam had no one but Loki to love.

If Loki couldn't see what effect it still had on him, on how it made him dizzy and happy and guilty and so wonderfully wrong than it didn't count. Sam shook his head.

"Give me some credit here." He said, smiling sadly, "I can screw myself up pretty bad all on my own."

Loki's eyes went up to the ceiling and then landed back on Sam. He let out a long suffering breath and disappeared. He came and went so fast that Sam wondered if he had been dreaming the whole time. Maybe a brand new symptom of demon blood withdrawal was hallucinations. Perfect.

He collapsed back on the bed as the world started spinning and he wiped the sweat off his brow. He was so damn cold but he was sweating like a runner in the Sahara. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_.

The bed depressed under something's weight next to him. He barely had time to register the hand, bigger and stronger than Ruby's, behind his neck as the plastic rim of a bottle was shoved into his mouth.

"Open up, here comes the choo choo train, stupid asshole." Said Loki. Sam obeyed, permitting the bottle to breach his lips and felt warm, thick blood in his mouth. Warm, thick demon blood. He let out a hungry moan and started gulping it down, it was so bitter and coppery. But god, god how he had learned to love the taste of iron. God it was so, much. It was in him, fueling him, holding him tighter than a lover ever could and stronger than anything he had ever known. Sam was getting near the end of the bottle and hated the idea that it could be over soon. He just wanted to drink and drink and drink, the rest of his life swallowing wave after wave of sinful, disgusting power. God it was so good. The plastic bottle crinkled as Sam sucked the empty air in desperate gulps.

"Ok, Tiger," said Loki gently as he eased the bottle away, "Ok, Tiger. All gone."

Sam grabbed Loki's wrist and he smelt it before he saw it. A little dried blood on the cuff of his sleeve. A little trickle of it on his hand. Sam was starting to put two and two together and he realized that Loki must have gone out and killed a demon for him to feed off of. And now he was covered in its blood. He held the wrist like it was the only thing keeping him from being swept off to sea.

"Sam?" asked Loki, his voice was hard but Sam recognized a note of question under it. A note of doubt.

Sam held Loki's wrist up to his lips and licked the blood off of his skittering pulse point. He grinned at Loki's reaction, pulse quickening, breathing heavy. Nothing these days got him harder than a heavy dose of demon blood and he could just start to feel it hit his system. Sam had never done more than drink to keep up with Dean and smoke some weed in college, but this high was nothing like those. He had never been more alert and awake than he was right now. He had never been so alive than when he drank the blood of the dead and the damned.

He turned it so the palm was facing upwards and then, in a single, strong stripe, he licked the blood off Loki's hand, kissing and sucking until he found the Trickster's finger. He pulled it into his mouth while watching Loki's face. It was the same slack jawed and glazed over look of pleasure that he remembered seeing when he had Loki's cock between his lips.

"When was the last time you fucked me good and hard, Loki?" Sam asked as he pulled his lips from Loki's index finger and wrapped his tongue, then his lips around the middle.

"I haven't been keeping track, I fuck so many giant pains in the ass, you know." Said the god. Sam smiled knowingly at his ineffective stab at nonchalance.

"Been thinking of me?" he asked, moving on to the ring finger and bobbing his head over the digit like he used to bob his head over Loki's dick.

"You told me to fuck off. I fucked off. Now you got your brother and your whore and your blood. What are you proving, Sam?" asked Loki through narrowed eyes, "You want me to want you? You want me to beg for you? Not happening, princess. Now, go ahead and keep your tongue to yourself before my fingers get all raisin-y."

Sam placed a hand to Loki's tented pants and began to massage the growing bulge there. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth against the fabric, giving the best cocksucking-pornstar eyes he could manage. He did want Loki to beg. He wanted to fuck and be fucked while he was pulsating with this life.

Ruby was a good sport. She let him toss her around and she would moan like her life depended on it when he flipped her onto her hands and knees and entered her from behind. She even let him come on her chest once, but she broke her little fuck toy character when she wrinkled her nose at the mess. For a demon, she was painfully vanilla. It was pretty clear that she didn't exactly love having sex, or at least not with him. And Sam would have been offended if he hadn't felt the same way about her. He screwed her because he needed to screw somebody, the blood made him horny as hell. Literally. But she always had to be looking away from him. She always had to be moaning or be silent because the only time that Sam could come was when he was thinking of someone else. The only time Sam could come was when he was thinking of the filthy, filthy things he had done with Loki.

Because, besides Ruby, Loki had been the only one who had seen Sam without Dean. Loki was the only one who had seen Sam rip himself to shreds and stayed anyways. And Sam, against all logic and reason, had loved Loki for it.

"Fuck me?" he begged with his lips still pressed into Loki's hardness, "Fuck me so hard I forget my name. You want me to beg? You want me to crawl and beg for your cock? Plead for it?"

"Ok, stop it," snapped Loki, standing and moving across the room. Sam wasn't deterred as he climbed into the bed and spread his long legs across the mattress, open to the god. He beamed with satisfaction at seeing the him lose composure like this. Loki had always been in control. Loki had always called the shots and even when Sam was ordering Loki to suck his cock, it was pretty clear that Loki was having a good time as well. He had never dug his nails into Loki, tried to get under his skin. He had never tried to seduce the god and that was a shame because this was quite fun. "So, Dean know what you were up to while he was six feet under?"

"He knows about Ruby, yeah."

"But not about me?"

"It's more complicated…"

"Because you're straight, right?" asked Loki, curling his lip into a cold sneer "You beg for cock awful pretty for a straight dude."

"No. No because…" Sam sought for the words. Yeah, Sam having sex with a guy might throw Dean through a bit of a loop, but it was more than that. Sam needed Ruby to help take down Lilith. Alone. Back when Sam wanted to burn the bitch or bust, he depended on Ruby to 'roid out and gank the cunt. It was two parts self-destruction and one part revenge. Poisoning himself on her blood so he might finally be able to do some good in his worthless life when he confronted Lilith.

Now Dean was back on the road with him, and this time, Dean was packing an army of angels. Sam had a demon and an unpredictable demigod in his camp. Dean could tolerate Sam and a little demon that they could both easily kill. Dean would have a harder time putting up with Sam and a god that had gotten the better of them both two times before. Because Sam and Loki was something big and dark that couldn't be sorted out with Ruby's knife. The angels didn't like Sam. The angels told Dean to keep Sam in line because Sam couldn't be trusted to his own devices.

And this? This would just prove them right.

"It's the angels—"

"Ugh, those assholes?" asked Loki, rolling his eyes, "Do yourself a favor and never listen to anything that any of them say."

Sam was taken aback by the venom in Loki's voice. Then he was pissed because Loki was hardly a good god. Sam loved him. He loved Sam. But that didn't make him kind or benevolent or holy. It didn't make him righteous. Loki was petty. Sam knew, he knew that his God wasn't like that.

"Back off, Loki." Snapped Sam, "You don't know what you're talking about."

"No, idiot, you don't know what you're talking about. Mark my words, Sammy, those angels have nothing good in store for you. They hate you. You symbolize everything they've been taught to despise."

"Can you blame them? Look at me, Loki. I'm a strung out junkie. A stung out, faggot junkie who can't do anything right. If I were them, I'd hate me too. But they're helping. They're helping us save the seals and they're helping us find and kill Lilith. They gave me Dean back and I will never forget that. All you've done is sit on your ass. There's a greater good."

"God, you're a moron. There is no greater good. There is no good. Just a bunch of blindly obedient nimrods with nuclear weapons strapped to their backs."

"No. There's good. There has to be good. I believe in it." Sam licked his lips and looked at the floor, willing his eyes to not grow misty, "I've spent my whole life fighting for it. I know that there is good."

"Then you're hopelessly stupid, you sheep."

Sam knew he would regret it, even while his fist was in midair. But rage and the venomous blood in his veins demanded action. Loki's head snapped back as Sam's hand collided with his jaw, and Sam felt bone break from the force of it. But, Sam realized with shock, it wasn't his hand that broke.

"Ow, you asshole! That fucking hurt." Snapped the god as he massaged his chin. Sam saw the bone lock itself back into place.

And the demon blood brought the only logical conclusion to the forefront of his brain before his human mind even comprehended what had happened.

Any other day of the week, Sam would be nursing a broken hand and cowering in fear of Loki's retaliation for that little stunt. Today, however, Sam's heart was pumping demon blood, and the god's bone yielded to his temper.

"Feel bett—" Loki began to sneer when Sam slammed his fist against him again. This time, Loki stumbled and fell back against the motel wall. Despite the broken nose, the eyes that peered out at him were stony and unafraid. Sam wanted him to hit back. Sam wanted a fight because otherwise it would become that fantasy where Loki was on his hands and knees and Sam fucked him hatefully from behind and that scared Sam somewhere. Somehow doing that to Loki would cement Sam's descent into freak. Awful, cruel, monstrous freak.

And then Sam was mad at Loki again for making him feel that. For making Sam love him. Why couldn't Loki have just let him drown himself in whiskey that night? Why couldn't Loki have slapped his hand away as Sam reached for him? The demon blood transferred every emotion Sam experienced into anger. Hot, blinding white rage was behind every single door of Sam's life, always lurking just below the surface. Or perhaps, worst of all, that rage had always been there. Perhaps Sam had always been a freak, the blood just allowed him to show it.

Sam grabbed Loki by the collar of his shirt and lifted him off the ground, shoving and holding him against the wall. Loki's nose had snapped itself right but the dried blood stayed on his lip and cheek. The god was unblinking and unfeeling beneath Sam's hot breath and furious gaze.

"Kiss me or hit me, Sam." He said calmly, "Does this make you feel like a big strong man? Tossing me around a bit? Poor little Sammy, so used to people who love him disappearing. Never had the opportunity to beat someone senseless just for taking care of you, have you?"

"Shut up."

"It isn't punishment enough that they love a freak? You have to make them bleed. You have to break them. Make them stop loving you before they figure it out and leave you on their own." Loki continued in his sneering voice. "Trust me, there is no need for that here."

"What…what are you saying?" snapped Sam. When Loki looked away, Sam snapped his head back against the wall. "Say it."

"I don't love you."

"Liar."

"I never loved you."

"You're lying."

"Freak."

Sam couldn't count the times that his fist made contact with the god's face after that. He could just see it grow distorted and red from the blood. It grew blurry through the unshed tears in his eyes.

"Hit me back!" he screamed at Loki, "Hit me back you monster! I hate you, I hate you. Hit me back."

He saw stars in front of his eyes as he fell back on the impact of Loki's punch. Sam was pretty sure that Loki could have hit a lot harder, but he wasn't about to complain. All he felt was peace. The shock of the pain cleared the tears from his eyes. The lingering burn brought the motel room back into perfect focus. It brought his former lover into plain sight and Sam fell apart all over again as he looked upon the damage he had done. The golden eyes that once shone with mirth and passion, that watched him hungrily while he sucked his cock and tenderly as Sam rode his thrusts were swollen shut with rings of blue forming beneath them. The lips that Sam had tasted and been tasted with were split. A cheek that got puled up into a smirk was hollow and broken. And Sam had done it all.

"Thank you," he whispered, "Thank you, I'm so fucked up. I'm so fucked up. I love you, Loki. I love you, don't leave me again. Never leave me again. I'm sorry I'm like this. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry" the words got lost into a babble of desperate nonsense as Sam sat on the floor.

"Hey, hey, it's ok, Sam, its ok." Said Loki, dropping down to the floor and wrapping Sam in his arms again. Sam wanted to cry and laugh and curl his face into Loki's chest and stay forever, asking the god to take care of him. Letting the god protect him from all the hurt and evil in the world. Letting Loki protect him from himself.

"Why don't they love me?" he asked, "Why don't the angels love me? I prayed. I believed. I just want… why don't they love me?"

"They don't know what they're missing." Loki assured him and Sam looked up in time to see one of Loki's teeth regrow into the bloody, empty socket left in the wake of Sam's wrath. He swallowed down the guilty bile in his throat at the sight.

"Loki. You don't have to if you don't mean it." Whispered Sam, "But if you do, I really need to hear it now."

"I love you, Sam." Said Loki, "But I'm not them. I'm not the love that you want."

Sam didn't disagree, but he held Loki closer to him. Loki was dark and twisted and mean. Loki hurt, Loki schemed and Loki took pleasure in extracting pain. No, Loki wasn't an angel. Loki wasn't the love he wanted.

But Sam was a far cry from perfect. Sam was a far cry from light and all he wanted was someone to love him as he was. Dean… Dean was a womanizer, a borderline alcoholic, a liar and a con man, but he was more righteous than Sam could ever hope to be. Everyone saw it in him. Everyone loved him more for it. Dean had an impossible ability to always do the right thing. It may have been hard, but it was always right.

Why was that line always so blurry for Sam? Who would have thought that trying to live a normal life would be wrong? Who would have thought that exorcising demons psychically could be wrong? Sam tried to do right, he did. Good god, did he try. Why was he always always on the wrong side of it? Why was he always resented for it?

Loki had never questioned if Sam was doing right or wrong. Loki never questioned if Loki was doing right or wrong, so the god never judged him.

Ruby was telling Sam that he needed to get stronger, even if he poisoned himself on her blood. There was a bigger picture and Lilith needed to die. Sam was the only one who would ever be tough enough to take her out. Dean was telling Sam that his psychic powers were dark and evil. That Lilith had to die, but that he and the angels would do it. That Dean and that stupid, blue eyed angel with a hard on for his big brother would kill Lilith the right way.

Loki just took Sam as he was.


	5. Chapter 5

Ruby crossed her arms across her chest and looked away from Sam. She let out a long frustrated breath as she was confronted with his glare.

"I am trying to be patient, Sam, you know that I am." She said, "But for crying out loud, we can't keep having this argument."

"We'll keep having it until you change your answer."

"I'm not the bad guy here," her eyes met his again as her voice softened, "You know, you know, that I'm right. That's what's so messed up is that you know I'm right. If you love your brother—

"You're not allowed to talk about Dean."

"Fine." Said Ruby, "But you can't do what you need to do if you're always looking over your shoulder for his approval. He won't understand this and he never will. It has to be you, Sam. I wish it didn't."

"You mean I can't be constantly high when he's around, right?"

"Yes." Said Ruby coldly, "And before you go rolling your eyes at me, you have to know that I'm right about that too. This coming up and down all the time? Getting strong then petering out? It isn't good for you, it isn't going to help kill Lilith and even he has to notice your mood swings." She took a stiff step forward and Sam turned his steely gaze from her to the floor. "I'm sorry that you're hurting. I'm sorry that it has to be like this, but if you want to be the man who saves the world you're going to have to do some things he won't like. He'll understand. After. That's just how it is."

She reached forward and slid her hand through his hair but the gesture was too slow and cold to pass for genuine affection. As Sam so often did when she touched him, he felt like she was a very poor actress trying to play a part. She was seducing him, loving him, caring for him because he was a human and that was how those worked.

But he needed her. He needed her blood and her knowledge of the demon world and workings, so he let her play her part. It was probably better than the alternative anyways.

When Sam's eyes stayed on the ground, he heard Ruby stand up and walk to the door. There was the sound of metal against the faux wood finish of the rickety motel table.

"You know that I'm right. You know that this is the way it has to be. Call me when you're done fighting with yourself. " she opened the door before pausing, "Or, call me when you run out."

The motel door clicked behind her and Sam stood, shaking out his tense limbs. He walked over and ran a thumb along the silver flask of blood she left behind, tracing the little brassy designs with a fingernail. It wasn't much. A week, at most. A week of just staying level. If he came across a demon he needed to gank, he would need much more.

He really didn't want to call Ruby, so he decided to spend the night uncomfortably dry in order to postpone the inevitable. He let out a long breath of frustration as he lifted the vial.

It was half empty.

The fucking bitch was shorting him. So he would have to call her sooner and they would argue again and every time he saw her he could feel her digging her sharp little claws into his flesh a little harder. Wrapping him around her finger a little tighter. And the truly fucked up part of it was that he couldn't really seem to do anything about it.

"Manipulative bitch," Sam grumbled, stowing the vial away inside his coat pocket.

"I prefer 'Loki,' thanks," said a voice behind him, "Or great pranker, or Trickster. Or, of course, Great God of the Screaming Orgasm. Yeah, let's go with that last one. I'll get business cards printed up."

Sam spun around and grabbed Loki, one hand behind his head while the other locked his around his back, spinning him and slamming the shorter body to the first hard surface Sam could find. Pressing Loki against the wall with more passion than grace, Sam started kissing him hard and furious. Loki let out an undignified moan of surprise as Sam's lips toured his for a second before large hands started pawing at the god's pants.

"I'm so glad to see you," said Sam against Loki's lips. His fingers found salvation as they grazed the warm flesh beneath the pants, "I've missed you."

"Clearly," said Loki, golden eyes flashing in poorly disguised amusement.

Sam gripped Loki's arm and threw him the four feet from the door to the bed. Or, rather, Loki let himself be thrown from the door to the bed. Sam started kicking off his boots and shirts dropping them all in a pile by the door. He was on Loki in an instant, hard body against hard body, hands on muscle and hair and lips without much thought or technique, just an (apparently mutual) need to be crushed up against something so hot and rough that life, death, the end of the world, his brother's approval, all got lost in panted breaths and skin. When he was in Loki's terrifyingly strong embrace, Sam knew that he was accepted and cared for. The rest didn't matter so much because for once, since Jessica and Stanford, Sam didn't feel guilt.

Sam had ran away from his family when they needed him. He had left Dean, he had left his father and, at the time, it seemed like the best thing for him to do. Then his Dad went missing and Dean needed him and Sam knew that Stanford wasn't where he was supposed to be.

Then he left with Dean and when he came back, Jess was dead and it was all because Sam wasn't where he should have been. Sam should have been there with her. He should have protected her because how was she supposed to know that demons were going to hurt her just for being close to him?

In Loki's arms, Sam felt like he was where he needed to be in that moment for the first time in his life. Never, not even when they had started their little affair, did Sam ever feel guilt about Loki's touch. Sam would be hard pressed to say why, but gay sex with a pagan god was just fucking _right_. Maybe that wasn't what Sam had wanted when they started, but that was how things had played out. The fucking had initially been to make him feel dirty. It made him feel wanted. It was supposed to hurt. It felt good. It was supposed to make him feel like a freak. It made him feel loved. And Sam wasn't about to throw this love away. Sam had never been one to throw love away.

"Ruby left but De-" Sam said between frantic kisses. Loki bit his lip and growled his jealous reaction to Ruby's name. Then the lip was sucked into Loki's mouth and soothed with an apologetic tongue.

"mmm—" Sam tried again, "She left and Dean should be back from Bobby's in a couple of hours so we have to be—oh, your hand right there, so good—fast."

"Then why aren't you sucking my dick right now?" asked the demigod and Sam smirked before sliding down Loki's body, fingers fighting a dozen tiny wars against buttons. If Sam didn't recognize the Armani label, he would have ripped them all for merely being in the way. "I thought we were on a time crunch, sugar lips." Said Loki, propping himself up on his elbows as he looked over his naked chest at Sam. Sam lifted his eyebrows and Loki rotated his finger in the air, gesturing wordlessly for Sam to turn around.

Sam scrambled to comply and as Loki's hands found his hips, Sam felt fingers meeting his tight entrance and he gasped from the long missed pressure. After a few seconds of working, Loki's hips rose, running the leaking erection against his cheek, and reminding Sam of what he was supposed to be doing down there.

"This isn't how teamwork is supposed to go, Sammy,"

Sam apologized by taking Loki's soft sack into his mouth, rolling each bulb with his tongue before moving up to take in the persistent cock. He wanted to ask the Trickster how this 'teamwork' is going for him, but the sloppy ministrations against his entrance told him that Loki was enjoying himself just fine.

The second that Loki's third finger found Sam's bundle of nerves, Sam opened his mouth wide in a silent yell of ecstasy. Loki's cock fell out of his mouth, though it didn't seem to matter since the demigod was manhandling Sam onto his back and lining his cock up with Sam's hole.

"Wait," Sam gasped and Loki stilled, brow pulled into a question.

Sam scrambled up off the bed and started hunting through his pile of clothes for his coat, his hands scratching at the pockets. Finally, his fingers made contact with the cold silver and Sam pulled the vial from the fabric. He walked over to Loki, climbing onto the bed with the metal clasped tightly in his hand.

All of Loki's sex-drunk glaze disappeared from his eyes as the golden brown looked at what was clutched in Sam's fist.

"I'm just going to take a little taste," he told Loki, "It makes me feel so good. I get so hard for you, already. It makes it so much better."

Loki simply continued to watch Sam with cold eyes. Not protesting. Not plying the blood from his fingers or yelling at him for wanting it. He just watched Sam with an expression that was very similar to disgust and sadness.

"What would happen if you took some?" Sam asked. "You can get drunk, right? That means you can probably get high, too. What would happen if you took some with me? We could feel so good together."

Loki's super strong hearing could detect how little blood was in the vial as Sam shook it. He cocked his head to the side, his eyes narrowing as he saw all the things that Sam didn't need to tell him.

"You said she was here today." He said. Sam nodded and Loki's eyes narrowed, "That won't last you a week." Sam shrugged and shook his head. "And you're offering to share with me? I don't know if I should be flattered or insulted."

"You make me feel so good, Loki. You make me feel so alive. I want you to feel what I feel. What could be wrong with that?"

"Or you want to share with me so I feel obligated to go out and get you your next hit for you."

Sam gave a guilty gulp and shrugged. A part of him did want Loki to get as high and horny as the blood made him. He wanted Loki to see music and hear color just like he did when he was high in the blood. But he also thought about how much Loki had given him last time. Compared to the drips and drops that Ruby threw his way, the whole bottle of blood Loki had given him was like a feast. It was greedy and wrong and Sam hated he fact that it even occurred to him.

But it did. And then Sam couldn't make the thirst disappear.

"I'm not about to become your dealer." Loki stated and Sam felt the room grow colder by several degrees.

"Fine, it's fine. I'm sorry." Sam said quickly crawling back towards Loki, joining him on the bed. "I'm sorry I asked. I'm sorry."

Loki shook his head, dismissing Sam's apologies, but he turned away from him, placing his feet on the floor with his back to Sam. Then suddenly, Sam understood. Loki wasn't going to stop him. But Loki wasn't going to watch him poison himself either.

Sam made quick work of twisting the cap off of the vial and dropping a little bit into his hand. Despite his best efforts of moderation, the vial was significantly lighter afterwards. A blast of iron, a warm shudder down his spine and then little Sam was at an even fuller attention, throbbing. Loki turned and looked at Sam on the bed behind him. They had gone from horny to cold in sixty seconds and Sam just wanted them to go back to hands and flesh and love.

"Don't be like Dean." Sam whispered, "Don't be like the angels. Don't hate me, Loki."

Loki's stony face fell. His shoulders dropped and he scooted back to join Sam on the bed, his hand on Sam's chest, stroking the firm muscles. Flicking over the hard nipples. Normally, the small jolts of carnal pleasure made Sam's stomach clench and his toes curl, like a sweet bath of lava running over his body, making him hot. But, with the blood, Sam was almost screaming, bucking his hips and moaning in pleasure. Loki stopped, watching Sam ride his high.

"Don't look at me like that," Sam pleaded, "Just fuck me. Just make everything better. No one loves me anymore. Dean doesn't love me anymore."

"You're being crazy. Of course he loves you."

"He doesn't call me 'Sammy' anymore. He doesn't look at me like I'm his brother anymore and it hurts so will you fuck me, please? I just want him to look at me again."

"Between the blood and the fact that you keep talking about your brother, you really know how to get me in the mood. Something about feeling like I'm being used really flicks my bic." Said Loki in that hard voice that Sam both recognized and dreaded.

"You never cared before." He said softly.

"Well, I care now." He said, moving away again, "If you love your brother so much, why don't you push that angel out of his bed and take his place?" The last words out of his mouth were bitter. Sam spared a moment to smile at the familiar defense mechanism. He had spent an entire childhood with someone who's initial response to insecurity was a sarcastic quip.

"Because Dean insists on a safe word and you and I both know that safe words are for pussies."

Loki threw a look of pure scandalized shock over his shoulder that made Sam laugh out loud, reaching forward and trailing his fingers down the slender spine.

"Joke, Loki. "said Sam, smiling softly, "I'm allowed to make them too."

Sam saw Loki smile despite himself and he withdrew the hand from his lover's back. Lust was beginning to form back in Loki's expression and Sam let his hand trail down his body to his own tight hole. It was awkward, and his fingers created more friction than Loki's magically lubricated ones did, but the hungry look on Loki's face as he watched made it tolerable. After a moment, he decided he liked a little of the friction, harsh against his hole, making the act of fingering himself extra filthy.

His long fingers found his sweet spot inside himself and he thanked his genetics that, while making shoe shopping an exercise in patience, made _this_ easier. His other hand started running over his red and swollen cock. The god watched him with nothing short of starvation in his eloquent gaze.

"I love you, you know that?" Sam asked Loki. Loki nodded, eyes never leaving Sam's hands, before diving forward and replacing Sam's hand with his mouth. Sam's back almost snapped in two as it jerked in reaction to Loki deep throating him without warning.

Then Sam's hand was almost jealously pulled from his own hole. Sam felt Loki's cock at his entrance and he breathed out the only words he could manage as the blood and the sex swirled in a dark hurricane of pleasure.

"Fuck me, please." He moaned, "Love me, please."

Loki obliged him on both.

*****

Sam was startled awake by Loki's disappearance. Loki came and went without disrupting the air or sounds around him. The god could come and go without even the space he occupied being any the wiser. Sam was woken by the sudden cold space between his arms where there had been a warm, loving body.

Then Sam heard the key in the door and kicked himself a hundred times over for falling asleep. He only had the presence of mind to shove the vial of Ruby's blood between the mattresses of the motel bed. The light of the street lamps in the parking lot lit his brother's hunched silhouette from behind. Dean, no doubt thinking he was asleep, quietly laid the Impala's keys on the bedside table and gave a stretch and a relieved sigh as he shut the door behind him. On his way to the bathroom, Sam heard Dean stumble over the clothes he had left by the door. Well, fuck.

"Fuck!" barked an already grouchy Dean. Seeming to decide that yelling at his brother's negligent housekeeping would be more satisfying than letting him sleep in peace made Dean scrape at the wall for a light switch.

"Wait, Dean, trust me, you do not want to turn on the li—"

The room was flooded in harsh fluorescent lighting. After Dean took a second to adjust to the assault on his senses, he looked down to find the culprit for his earlier stumble. A flannel button down.

He looked at its accomplices; boots, pants, a coat. Dean gave a great gulp of apprehension before slamming his eyes shut as he saw Sam's underwear. Then, slowly, Dean's gaze trailed up the bed to where Sam was clutching blankets over his very naked body.

"You naked, Sam?" he asked in a level voice.

"Uh, yeah."

Dean gave a nod and turned his back as he processed this. Then he calmly turned back to his brother.

"WHAT THE FUCK,SAM?!" he yelled, silently gagging with disgust. "Why are you naked? Why are your clothes by the door? And why are you _naked_?"

"Uh," Sam cast around. Dean rolled his eyes and then, giving a theatrical grimace, he bent down and lifted up Sam's pants. Holding them like a radioactive bomb, he passed them to Sam who, gratefully, scrambled to put them on. With his naughty bits clad, Sam jumped up and started gathering his other clothes from the floor, avoiding Dean's gaze. Dean cleared his throat, making it clear that Sam still needed to come up with something to say, "Uh, you know. You weren't here… I haven't, ah, I was a little lonely."

"Eww, Sam." Shuddered Dean, "How about, next time, you deal with that in the shower like a fucking man, not ass naked in a motel room you share with your _brother_. God. People talk enough as it is, pervert."

"You weren't even here!" snapped Sam, but happy that Dean took the excuse so readily. But then, Dean had always had a special gift for latching onto even the flimsiest lie of it protected his relationship with someone he loved.

No, Dad was probably fine, he just forgot what time it was and called while Sam and Dean were in school. He would call again later. No, Sam wasn't drinking demon blood, he was just going through a tough time, they all were. When Sam was younger, he believed Dean's little falsities as easily. As he grew older, however, and he realized that Dad might have not called because he was dead or hurt or just plain negligent. His first reaction had been to get mad at Dean for spooning him lie after lie. Then he realized that the excuses might have not been for him after all. Dean had a knack for convincing himself to accept the little white lies he made up. Believing his own bullshit was infinitely easier than trying to deal with a real problem between them. Easier than seeing an uncomfortable truth, even if it was right in front of him.

"Whatever, I just drove for, like, sixteen hours straight. We can deal with your numerous sexual issues tomorrow."

Sam let out a sigh of relief as he passed Dean, making his way to the motel bed, on his own way to the bathroom. Dean skirted him widely before shuddering again. Sam switched his dirty clothes with some sweats to sleep in and found Dean, not unconscious in bed like he anticipated, but staring with calculating disgust at the floor between their two beds.

Sam's heart fell into his stomach as he realized that that was where he had stashed Ruby's blood. The vial must have fallen out because he had never seen Dean look so terrified in his life.

"Dean?" asked Sam, cautiously moving forwards. Dean just looked up at him, mouth open in a question, brain whirring at a million miles a minute to justify whatever he had been looking at. Dean was a hell of a lot smarter than he let on, and that mental capacity was generally used to supply sarcastic remarks, pick-up-lines and denial. Sam could see Dean working on over drive to supply an excuse on Sam's behalf. An excuse for him to keep trusting and loving Sam despite an increasing amount of evidence to the contrary.

Despite his best efforts, Dean was drawing a blank.

Sam took another step forward and looked over the unmade bed to the silk red boxers that were directly in Dean's line of vision. Dean and Sam had lived in uncomfortably close quarters their entire lives. Dean knew every item of Sam's clothing as well as he knew his own and Dean knew that Sam didn't own silk anything.

"Please tell me you were really fucking a fat lesbian?"

"Dean."

"I like to see that you're widening your wardrobe options. Silk boxers? A little cheesy, don't you think Sam?"

"We need to talk. You should probably sit down."

"Sam, I don't need to hear the details of you squeezing the sausage in your new underwear."

"Dean, I'm gay."

Sam watched his brother pinch his nose and drop into the bed opposite his. Dean took a long breath and Sam knew that his brother liked confront uncomfortable topics, like sexual orientation, about as much as he liked a succubus in his bed. Clothes messily abandoned by the door, even when both had been raised to keep a militantly tidy living quarter. Sam naked in the bed when Dean knew that Sam didn't even like being naked on the journey from the bathroom to the main room when he forgot an item of clothing. Red silk boxers that were too small and almost comically counter to Sam's understated tastes. Dean rubbed his temples.

"Shit, Sam." He said. Sam had a sudden nervous clench in his gut at Dean's reluctant tone. Sam had always shrugged off his brother's uber masculine , and often insensitive, sense of humor was just an act. He never in a million years thought that Dean might have a problem with this. Dean looked up at Sam and saw the fear of rejection in his little brother's face and corrected himself immediately. "No, Sam. No, it's fine. I love you no matter what. It's just, that's a big one, you know? I mean, how long have you…?"

"A couple of months."

"Months?" asked Dean, standing and making his way to his ever faithful stash of gin in the bottom of their Dad's old leather duffle. "That's a long time to keep a big secret."

Sam took a long gulp of air as Dean swallowed a generous mouthful of alcohol. Guilt and fear and regret came rushing through him. The gay thing. If only that were his biggest secret. No way could Sam tell Dean about Ruby's blood. No way could Sam tell Dean about Loki. That last one hurt more than Sam wanted it to. Sam hated himself for taking the blood. Sam hated himself every minute he was in Ruby's company. But, against all his best efforts, he couldn't hate himself around Loki. He didn't want to keep that a secret from Dean.

"Yeah." Said Sam, sighing, "There's more. You should probably sit down again."

Dean walked back over to the bed and sat warily, this time though, he brought the bottle of gin. It was nestled close to his chest like a child might clutch a teddy bear.

"I've been seeing someone. A guy." As Sam expected, the bottle found lips in the blink of an eye. Sam sighed, waiting for Dean to finish before he continued. "It's been off and on for a few months. It's been on again for a long time, this time."

"You have a boyfriend?" Dean croaked.

"I guess." Said Sam, and when Dean raised his eyebrows, Sam shrugged. It had always seemed pointless to pin Loki down under any label. 'Man,' 'god,' 'Trickster,' 'Lover' and 'Monster' all described Loki, depending on Loki's particular mood and the day of the week. Sam hadn't even considered Loki a boyfriend until Dean did it for him. He wasn't having sex with Ruby anymore, she didn't seem to mind a bit, and he wasn't even looking at anyone else. In a simple, human phrase, Loki was Sam's boyfriend. "He takes me as I am. He loves me even when I can't love myself. We fight. He leaves. We make up. He makes me feel so happy Dean. He makes me feel like I haven't felt since Jess. I love him."

"We've been in ten different towns in the past two months. How are you guys 'making up' if you aren't in the same place twice?"

"He travels around a bit, like us. Sometimes he makes a point of finding me."

"He a hunter?"

"Something like that."

"He's good to you?"

"He's better to me than I am to myself."

"When can I meet him?"

"You… you want to meet…?"

"The man you love? Yeah. I want to know who's ass to kick if he breaks your heart." Dean said dryly, but his face softened as he looked over Sam. "This… this is why it's been so weird lately. You've been keeping this thing a secret? I want to meet him, Sammy. You should never be afraid to let people see you love someone."

"Ok," said Sam as his eyes watered. "You'll like him, Dean. He's funny. You'll like his style."

Dean was calling him 'Sammy.' Dean was loving him again. And Loki loved him. Sam was the luckiest man on the planet and he didn't even need demon blood to feel this.

"Being gay doesn't give you an excuse to be a girl, Sammy," said Dean in mock disgust as he took in Sam's happy tears.

"I know, I know, no chick-flick moments." Sam said, rubbing his misty and laughing at the impossible waterfall of good fortune in his life.

Dean didn't have to know that Loki was the Trickster. Loki could adopt a disguise. He couldn't be himself, but he could be there. Sam could love him out in the open. What were a few more lies, really? Wasn't it more important that he show Dean that he was loved and could be loved? Wasn't it more important that Dean meet the man who touched him and saved him from Lilith and more importantly himself? Loki didn't have to be a secret anymore. That didn't have to be a secret anymore.

"Jesus, go call him if you need someone to cry to," said Dean, dismissing Sam with a playful wave.

"Ok," laughed Sam, "Ok." His world was blurry. He felt drunk and high and alive and this time it was love that filled him up, not poison. It was Loki and Dean.

The only things he had ever really needed.

********

The phone number had been a formality.

Gabriel had given it to Sam to make Sam feel like he had some level of control in their relationship. Yes. It was creepy and stalker-y and a thousand other human ways to say unhealthy, but Sam was screwing a archangel and that meant that he didn't really have much say in when he saw and was seen by his lover.

Sam had to be able to guess as much. He had never used the phone number, Gabriel just showed up in his bed when he was alone and horny and Sam never really questioned it.

Gabriel watched Sam stand outside the motel room, shivering in the cold but smiling so brightly to himself that Gabriel could feel the warmth, even in his celestial state. Sam stood with his phone to his ear, the smile faltering a little with each unanswered ring. When the phone went to voicemail, Sam told 'Loki' to call him back. Soon. Please.

Michael had always told him that lies beget lies. You tell one, you need to tell another to cover the first. Then another. Then another until there were so many little lies stacked on top of each other that it was impossible to tell even one truth without the tower of cards falling down.

Lucifer had told Gabriel that Michael begets sticks out of his ass. The pompous eldest pulled hypocrisy out of the air as easily as he drew breath. Lies were bad until Michael needed them, then they were noble. Gabriel had laughed with his brother because, he too, thought that Michael was being a bully and a prat and Lucifer was the only one who had enough balls to say it.

Then Lucifer rebelled.

Then Lucifer maimed and tortured innocent souls because he could and because they were there. He claimed that no human was innocent. They were all greedy. They were all ugly and wasteful and a sin committed in the mind was as bad as a sin committed with the hand and Gabriel doubted many things Michael had told him, but he knew that Lucifer's bent on humanity was wrong.

Michael held his hand out to Gabriel. He asked Gabriel to fight with him for heaven and for righteousness and Gabriel couldn't. Killing his brother, his favorite brother, if truth be told, didn't feel right either. So, when Michael wasn't looking, Gabriel ran. He didn't run to Lucifer. He didn't run back to Michael. Like a child he hid with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears as though if he couldn't hear it and he couldn't see it, it wasn't real.

Gabriel didn't know what was "right" anymore. Both of his brothers spewed speeches, but both of their arguments for righteousness made Gabriel feel sick. Why did "good" have to come with blood? Why did one have to die? Couldn't they both see that they were idiots? Couldn't they just fucking stop it?

Turns out, they couldn't.

The war came and went and "peacetime" simply meant gearing up for the sequel. The one where there would be blood and it would be final. Gabriel feared it. But after the blood, he wouldn't have to choose anymore. One would be dead. One would be alive and that was that. And a sick part of Gabriel couldn't wait for it to just be fucking over.

Sam clicked his phone shut and went back into his motel room. Dean stuck his head out of the bathroom, a foamy toothbrush protruding from his mouth. He raised his eyebrows. Sam shrugged and mumbled 'voicemail' before he sat on the bed. His brother spit and rinsed and walked out into the main room, unsure of what to say to help his brother's insecurity.

"He's a hunter, right?" asked Dean, and Sam hesitated a second before nodding his head. Lies beget lies.

"Well," his brother continued, "Maybe he's just driving to his next hunt. Plenty of reasons that someone can't answer the phone, Sammy. No biggie."

"Yeah," said Sam. Then he thought about it for a moment and decided to believe Dean's placation rather than all the little alarm bells in his head. Ignoring all instinctual uneasiness that was right on the fucking money. "Yeah, no biggie."

And Sam smiled again as his brother gave him a pat on the shoulder and each collapsed onto their respective beds. Sam rolled onto his stomach and took a deep sniff of the sheets which still smelled like him and his lover. He fell asleep with a soft look of peace on his perfect face.

Sam was happy and that was so very, very bad. In all that had been foretold, Sam Winchester being happy at this stage in the prophecy was strictly prohibited. All the things he needed to do, the lies he'd have to spin, the blood he'd have to shed were not the actions that anyone could perform if they were anything besides heartbroken and desperate. No self respecting person would poison themselves. Lucifer's vessel was not supposed to be smiling as he smelled his lover in his bed.

Gabriel had felt solace in Sam's arms, but it had been a lie. Sam didn't know who he was. Sam didn't know anything about him. Sam preferred the other angels, the ones in the books and the paintings; brave and strong and true.

That just wasn't Gabriel was or had ever been.

The right thing to do would be for Gabriel to go to Sam. Tell him that Sam had to do things and Gabriel couldn't watch. Tell him that he had fucked up and it wasn't supposed to be like this and he was sorry that love had even entered the equation because it was harder now. As usual, the "right" thing made Gabriel's stomach twist. As usual, Gabriel was a coward.

So he ran.

********

"Sammy, you gotta quit checking your phone." Snapped Dean, looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye from the driver's side of the Impala.

"You've got your damn music so loud that I wouldn't be able to hear if someone calls," Sam snapped back.

"You mean you wouldn't be able to hear if he calls." Sam didn't answer, but looked stubbornly out the window. Dean knew him well enough to know what that meant, "Look, send him an email or something when we stop for breakfast, huh? It's been a week. People lose their phones all the damn time."

"You don't know anything, Dean." Grumbled Sam, "You don't know anything so don't try and talk like you do."

"Don't you go picking a fight with me if you have your panties in a bunch because some guy isn't calling you back. Gay isn't girl, Sam. Stop being a bitch about it."

"Jerk." Mumbled Sam, but he looked back out the window of the Impala.

"You said you guys were on again off again." Dean ventured when Sam was silent for a few minutes. Sam nodded. "Well, maybe you guys are off again. Did you fight?"

"I don't think so." Said Sam, softly, "I mean, maybe, but he wasn't there when I woke up—"

"Classy."

"Maybe we are off again." Sam said softly, mulling the words over, his face falling.

"Maybe he just took off 'cause he knew I was coming back and didn't want to wake you. And people do lose their phones, you know."

"Yeah," said Sam, his voice taking on a note of hope, as he latched on to his brother's excuse, "Yeah, maybe."

********

"Where the fuck have you been?" Sam snapped as Ruby walked into the motel room.

"Hello to you too," she said dryly, "I've been rolling around in the scummiest gutters of Hell trying to find Lilith. How was it topside? I heard there is a new James Bond movie out."

"Cut the crap, Ruby." Sam barked. He was shaking and sweating and the world wouldn't hold the fuck still long enough to puke or pass out, both felt like very real possibilities. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing, you dumb bitch. Shorting me? Getting me all needy so you have a little more control?"

"How many demons have you killed in the past week? What, are you a picky eater or am I just special?"

"You know I can't do that with—"

"You can't do that with Dean around."

"I told you to stop bringing him up." Sam barked again, placing his hand on the chair to stop the room from spinning.

"It's not bringing him up, you're always thinking about his opinion of you."

"Not in the mood for this argument, Ruby."

"Fine," said Ruby, then, more gently, "Fine. I'm sorry, alright? I'm sorry."

Sam smelled the blood pooling from the cut on her arm and intercepted the hand as it made to run through his hair. As usual, the first taste was like slamming the breaks on the spinning room. A cool glass of water in the desert. One hand secured his grip on Ruby's arm as the other slid beneath her pants. She stiffened at the abrupt intrusion but Sam wasn't about to hesitate.

If she wanted to use her feminine wiles to manipulate him, fine. He had stopped caring about her little femme fatale act a long time ago. But if she was going to use her pretty, young, female body to try and control him, she could be his whore when he needed her to be. The excess blood was heading south and Sam's cock hadn't been touched in months.

"Hands and knees," Sam ordered, pulling his lips from her arm. When Ruby took too long, he flipped her over roughly, one hand holding a fistful of hair, shoving her face into the mattress, the other pulling her pants down and off. They got caught around the high heels of her boots, but Sam didn't even stop to untangle them. They were out of the way and that's what mattered. His hands went to the lips of her entrance as he lined himself up, but then he saw the other hole that he had never touched.

He pressed a thumb to it and Ruby's body tensed. But she was his whore when he needed her to be, and she knew the score. Sam knew how it was done, even if he had never done it. He slipped fingers into the small hole to open in and he felt Ruby squirm with discomfort beneath him. He knew how to make it gentle. He simply chose not to.

Because it was a fantasy with something dark and fucked up and twisted. Ruby's teeth sank into the blanket as he entered her, biting back a scream of pain. He had a handful of hair in one hand and a warm hip in the other as he fucked her. Pounding, fucking, hurting. Revenge for making him powerless. Revenge for making Sam the butt of the joke. Cementing Sam's descent into freak and he didn't even care anymore.

Dean didn't look at him. Loki wouldn't come to him. He was stupid for ever thinking that he deserved the love of his brother and his lover. Look at him. Fucking a demon up the ass, hard and unloving. What had ever happened in his life to ever make him think he deserved better?

He pulled out of her when he was done and let her fall onto the bed, used. He left her there as he went to wash the whore and the hate off his body even as he knew it was deeper than that. He was a freak and it was pumping through him, demon mixing with his blood. Perhaps it always had been. Now was his chance to finally do some good in his worthless life.

"Ruby?" he asked as he came back out into the bedroom. She had put her clothes on and was sitting uncomfortably in the chair by the door. She could have left. She didn't. At the end of the day, everyone else had written Sam off. Everyone else had left, but she stayed.

"Ruby. I'm ready, now."


	6. Chapter 6

When Jess died and Dean took him back on the road, Sam saw her everywhere.

He saw her in that pretty white dress she wore the first time he laid eyes on her. Not at that party, that was the first time he talked to her. The first time he saw her, he had been riding his bike to class and time stopped, people disappeared and all there was were blinding white curls, a pretty dress and the promise of something divine as she met his eyes.

She was his sanctuary. Even before he knew her, kissed her, entered her sweet wet warmth, he could see her like a beacon of safety and shelter. She was a promise that there was good and beauty in the world, that there was something besides the nightmares he had been raised on.

His father taught him that anything that looked "good" was probably just a very skilled liar. Nobody acted without agenda. If you were lucky, though, that other person's agenda wouldn't screw you over too bad or it would be for something you didn't really want or need in the first place. That was what friendship was. Only family was unconditional.

But Jess wasn't like that. Jess laughed, even when he wasn't funny. She curled into his chest even when he was too depressed or too drunk to make love to her. She hung around him even when he was being boring and un-sexy. And then she would say things like "I love you" and "I need you" and "Come back to me" with such sincerity that it made his heart swell and his head spin. She wanted him, no agenda at all.

Then those blonde curls were dyed orange and brown with blood, the pretty white dress was slit and stained and that divine creature was staring blankly down at him. She was all that was good in his world and that demon was rubbing it in his face. Sam didn't get normal. He didn't get lights and angels and salvation.

He saw her in every blonde woman that walked by. He saw her in every white dress under the sun of every backwoods, podunk town. Jess was more than beauty and love. She was a promise of good and normal and peace. He didn't have to fight for Jess or fight with Jess. They fell together naturally.

Sam had stopped seeing her a long time ago. He had given up on the idea of her sanctuary from all that was dark and cruel. That just wasn't how his world worked anymore. Maybe it never was.

But, as far as Sam knew, Loki wasn't dead. A deadbeat coward, maybe. An asshole, definitely. But he wasn't dead. So when Sam saw him on the airplane after being pulled from Lucifer just as the curtain was rising, Sam stood half out of his seat to go to him. But Loki looked right at him and gave the smallest shake of his head. That was when Sam noticed that his arms were bloody and stripped like he had pulled something from the jaws of a feral dog.

Or like he had pulled two brothers from the grip of the Devil himself.

One passenger gave a small gasp and Sam knew for sure that he wasn't the only one who saw Loki standing there. Sam stood to go to him, but Loki shook his head again and this time gave a small wink.

It was half hearted but it gave Sam a small reassurance nonetheless.

And then the plane swerved to avoid the flash of light and Sam had time to see that Loki was gone before the plane started to spiral in the air to avoid Lucifer's grand entrance.

Once again, Sam Winchester became a man obsessed.

*********

When he was younger, the stacks and stacks of Bobby's books seemed endless. As long as he dedicated enough time, he could always find the answer within the dusty shelves. Now, however, hour after hour of reading and skimming and searching gave him nothing more than a headache and possibly irreversible eye damage from squinting at the small text in the perpetually dim lighting.

So Sam called Rufus who called a friend who let Sam into the Harvard University Library late at night and helped Sam to translate old Norse volumes into English but to no avail.

After a month, Sam decided that there was no summoning ritual at all. The Trickster, Loki, his boyfriend- in a simple human phrase- had been talking out of his ass when he imitated Bobby that night all those years ago. Back when Sam had hunted Loki and hated Loki. But now Sam knew that he loved that cruel Trickster and the stakes were higher this time around.

Sam tried calling for him, laying in bed at night and wishing that Loki was there to fuck him and kiss him and love him like he had a lifetime ago. When Sam had thought he was worthless and broken beyond all repair, Loki had held him like he was precious. Now Sam had been a contributor in creating Hell on Earth and he really needed Loki beside him.

Jess had been sweet and gentle and kind. All soft touches and soothing words. Loki was hard and fast and mean but he was there. And he kept coming back. And he loved Sam, no agenda.

Sam hadn't needed to prod Dean as much as he had thought he would to get his big brother to Wellington, Ohio. Either they were looking at the most obsessive bear in history or something much more akin to their particular line of work. Then Sam heard that the man who was killed was attacked by an irate Dr. Bruce Banner.

He had found him, finally, he had found him.

"So, a hot-head killed by T.V's biggest hot-head," said Sam.

He wasn't sure if he was going to hit Loki for leaving him high and dry or if he was going to kiss him. He knew Loki even if the demigod was too proud or cocky to think that little Sam could ever pin him down, but it took one to know one. Dean was flip and mean and he used his jokes and sarcasm to keep the world at arm's length.

But Sam ran.

Sam ran from his father. Sam ran from his brother. When the going got tough, Sam was halfway to anywhere before the shit hit the fan. So Sam knew Loki.

"Just desserts, sweet tooth, screwing with people before you kill them… we're dealing with the Trickster, aren't we?"

"Sure, looks like," said Sam levelly.

Now that little voice in the back of his head was starting back up again. That part that Sam had stopped listening to after he woke up clean from the bitch blood. The little voice that was always telling Sam he wasn't good enough. That train of thought that had been more dangerous than Ruby or Azazel ever could be. What if he doesn't want to see you? Said that little voice, and Sam's blood turned to ice at the thought, what if he doesn't love you after all?

"Good," said Dean, "I've been wanting to gnank that mother since Mystery Spot."

Loki's lips on his. Loki's hands on his hips. Cheeks hollowed, eyes shining as he was on his knees, sucking Sam's cock. Demon blood in a bottle, staving off withdrawl. Teasing eyes looking away as Sam poisoned himself. They had moved together, breathed together. A sad smile and a wink on an airplane, saving him.

That mean little voice was softer when Sam remembered Loki loving him. No, he thought, That's love. It's nothing like I expected but it's love and it's good and he loves me too.

"You sure?" asked Sam. Whether he was talking to himself or to Dean was impossible to tell.

"Yeah, I'm sure," said Dean fixing Sam with a 'no duh' expression.

"No, I mean, are you sure you wanna kill him?" asked Sam. Dean raised his eyebrows like Sam was a lunatic, so he pressed on, "I'm just saying—"

"What are you saying?" asked Dean, "You don't wanna kill him, then what?"

What did Sam want to do? Yell at Loki? Love Loki? Run away and live together forever? Shop at Pottery Barn and snuggle on the sofa as they watched movies? Sam didn't know if Loki could even be domesticated and he wasn't sure he wanted that anyways. It would be one thing to make Loki let Sam love him, but then what? Sam was prime real estate for an archangel and the world was falling around his ears. Sam and Loki had never used words like 'future' or 'us' or 'together' in the same day, let alone the same conversation.

Sam hadn't asked for Loki's help last time.

Sam hadn't done a lot of things right last time.

"Talk to him?" Said Sam and it was that same face that Dean had made when Sam ran off with Ruby all over again. "Think about it Dean, he's one of the most powerful creatures that we've ever met. Maybe he hates this angels and demons stuff as much as we do. Maybe he'll help us."

"A bloody, violent monster and you want to be Facebook friends with him?" asked Dean," Nice, Sammy."

"The world is going to end, Dean." Said Sam. "We don't have the luxury of a moral high ground."

Sam didn't have the luxury of perfection. Sam wasn't perfect. Sam had fucked up. A lot. A disproportionate share of fucking up was done on Sam's part and Loki had never held it against him.

Dean still looked skeptical. "If he says no… we'll kill him." Sam said.

"Aww, how cute, you think I'd let you kill me?" Loki's voice rang in his head, pinned beneath Sam in the Impala's backseat. Sam knew it was a lie, but the words hurt nonetheless. He just needed to find Loki. He just needed Loki to know that Sam loved him, no matter how far away he tried to run. There couldn't be love between two people who ran away at the first sign of trouble, so Sam was going to be the one to stay, for the first time in his life.

He was tired of screwing up. He was tired of hating himself. He had no idea what the future would hold for them, but loving Loki was right. It was one of the most complicated relationships that Sam could fathom but he was going to make it simple. He was making this simple.

"How are we gonna find the guy anyway?" asked Dean.

"He never takes just one victim, right?" asked Sam. Sam remembered when Loki would appear in his room at night, while he was asleep and be woken to warm wet heat on his cock. Sam remembered the week that he couldn't take a shower without, at some point, being bent over and fucked into the stream of hot water. Loki had always found him.

"He'll show." Sam said.

Dean gave Sam a long look before he nodded and turned. Sam couldn't watch as Dean sharpened the stake to bury in Loki's heart. He could only try to not flinch every time Dean's knife carved a little more wood off into a point.

********

Sam figured it was probably a sin to break into a church at two in the morning, but he had so much sin on his tab, it was getting to the point of wanting to shrug and say, 'fuck it, what's a little more?'

Loki, no, Gabriel was quiet, but Sam knew he was there, sitting two pews back, watching Sam look at him. No, not the real him. The stained glass depiction of an angel with a horn, alerting all of Bethlehem to the birth of the prophet, with a sword at his side and his hand out benevolently to the Virgin Mary and all that was holy and good. That wasn't who Gabriel was anymore. Sam wondered if Gabriel had ever really been like that.

"You should see Da Vinci's 'The Annunciation.' My hair looks fabulous. "

"And he opens with a joke, as usual." Sam spat bitterly.

"Missed you too, Sam." Said Gabriel, and Sam hated the fact that there was so much surrender in the tone.

Sam wanted a fight. The man you loved leading a double life? The man you loved disappearing for a damn near year? The man you loved sitting on the sidelines as you stood, like a cow in line for the slaughter, and not lifting a damn finger? This was a yelling, screaming, angry fight and if Gabriel wasn't even going to participate, Sam would probably end up hitting something or crying. Both would be embarrassing and unproductive, so Sam wanted a fucking fight. Could the trickster—no, archangel—just give him that?

"Maybe you should have popped in, asshole."

"Can't you see why I didn't?"

"Because you fell in line with the company policy to get me all trussed up for Lucifer? Because you were just using me and then you were done. The really fucked up thing, Lo—Gabriel—is that I'm so damn used to this, that it doesn't even hurt anymore. Azazel's blood. Ruby's lies. Now this. This is fucking yesterday's news. It's just getting boring, at this point. Sam Winchester is weak and needy. Any old demon or angel can pop right in and screw around with him a bit. It doesn't even hurt anymore."

"Liar."

"Don't you do that." Snapped Sam, finally turning around and looking at Gabriel behind him. Gabriel's vessel was about fifteen years older than Sam was and for the first time Sam could remember he looked it. And he looked small. Sam refused to let his anger deflate as he looked at his lover. His savior. A liar. "Don't you do that to me. I loved you, Gabriel. Gabriel. I loved you and you let me call you by some other guy's name. You let me poison myself. You helped me poison myself. So don't."

"The demon blood… it wasn't like that, Sam. Go ahead and warp the memories if you need to. Make me the bad guy, hell, I deserve it, but don't you pretend that the stupidest moments of my life were the meanest. I should have never touched you. That was mistake number one. I didn't use you, Sam, I just royally fucked up."

"What is this? Act two? Make me fall in love with you again? Not happening."

"You think I had a master plan? Do you realize how _stupid_ I was? Does it make sense—to you—to cozy up to the vessel of my brother? Even after I defaulted from Heaven? Even when both of my brothers put a price on my head? Heaven has been watching you, and I snuck right in and fell in love. See? Stupid."

"You saved me from Lucifer," said Sam slowly, "You saved me and Dean from Lucifer and you could have just left us there. You were supposed to just leave us there."

"See what I mean? Stupid."

"You ran away."

"I ran away." Said Gabriel, nodding, "I ran from you. I ran from Lucifer, from Michael. I'm not that," he said, pointing over Sam's head to the depiction of himself, proud and pious. "You can hate me, that's fair enough, but I love you, Sam. I never lied about that."

Sam's mouth fell shut, defeated.

Suddenly, Gabriel stood and walked down the altar of the empty church. He paused in front of the stained glass and looked over to Sam who couldn't tear his eyes away.

Gabriel was a coward. Gabriel was weak. Gabriel was scared.

And Sam still loved him.

Gabriel tilted his head at Sam and slid out of his coat, dropping it to the floor. He cast a shy glance back up at Sam before he undid the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt. He started on the buttons of his collar as Sam rose to his feet and walked towards the angel. By the time he got there, Gabriel had dropped the shirt to the ground on the side as well.

"What are you doing, Gabriel?" asked Sam, and Gabriel's breath hitched as Sam called him by his real name.

"You think you're the only one who ever feels unlovable?" he asked with a heartbreaking twisted smile.

Gabriel didn't wait for Sam to say anything as he started to unbutton his pants, sliding them down and kicking them off to the pile of discarded clothing. Gabriel looked small, standing naked before him. Small and pitiful and lost like a very bald and very powerful puppy.

Sam still loved him.

He kicked off his boots and started shedding layers as Gabriel watched him hungrily. When he was finally as naked as Gabriel, Sam stepped forward and pressed his lips to Gabriel's forehead. Gabriel sighed in relief. He angled his head up hopefully and Sam granted him a soft press to his lips.

It was hesitant and, despite the body that he was pretty sure he had licked every inch of, Sam felt a little like he was holding a stranger. The name was new, the story was new, but when Sam's lips met his lover's, Sam knew that nothing had changed.

But everything had changed.

Because, more than anything else, Gabriel was begging Sam to fix him, hold him, fuck him. Gabriel had always put Sam back together. Gabriel had always made Sam feel like he was more than his mistakes. And now Gabriel was standing naked and begging Sam to take him. Begging Sam to assert that he was something worth taking.

So Sam started pressing his body into Gabriel's and it was like they had never, ever, climbed out of bed from each other. Sam knew the way to kiss, Sam knew the way to touch. Somehow, either Gabriel pulled him down or Sam guided them down, but they were kissing and rutting together on the floor.

Of the church.

"Gabriel," Sam panted as he pulled his mouth from his angel's, "This is the weirdest place I've ever had sex."

Gabriel grinned sadly and shrugged. His eyes looked up over Sam's shoulder to where the cold and blank eyed glass Gabriel stared off into space.

"This way you can love and be loved by an angel." The smile Gabriel gave him was thin and plastered and Sam wanted it to go away and never ever come back. "Even if I'm a poor excuse for one."

Sam had loved Gabriel as Loki. Sam had loved Gabriel as a nameless trickster. Gabriel wasn't the stiff and holy angel in the picture and Sam couldn't care less. That angel promised salvation and peace and harmony and that wasn't Sam's reality. It never really had been.

It was perfect, or whatever perfect was supposed to look like, and Sam didn't want it anymore. He wanted unpredictable temperament and mean humor. He wanted a coward. He wanted Gabriel.

He loved Gabriel.

Sam didn't know how to say all that so instead he resumed kissing Gabriel until the angel was panting and holding his hair and shoulders as Sam's lips moved down. Sam hesitated over the cock and Gabriel made a noise of protest. Gabriel was beautiful and willing, but he wanted something else.

Sam pressed a digit against Gabriel's entrance and the angel closed his eyes and laid his head back in relief. When Sam pressed two fingers into the hole, Gabriel's back arched and he cast those expressive eyes back up at Sam.

"Fuck me, please." Gabriel murmured, "Love me, please."

Sam obliged him on both.

********

"Gabriel." Sighed Sam lazily as he stretched his well fucked muscles. "Gabriel."

The angel, lying next to him on the scratchy carpet of the church, propped up on an elbow and looked down at him with question.

"Just getting used to it." Sam said as he smiled wryly. Gabriel gave him an odd look but shrugged and settled back into Sam's arms.

"Can I call you 'Gabe'?" he asked. Gabriel wrinkled his nose with distaste but shrugged. "Can I call you 'Gabe-y Baby'?"

"Absolutely not."

"Kit and Gabe-oodle?" teased Sam, burying his face in Gabriel's neck and nipping at it. Gabriel sighed and leaned into the contact, but refused to smile and play along with Sam's game. This, of course, only made it more fun for Sam. " Planet of the Gabes?"

"Now you're just being mean." He said, but rolled so that he was on top of Sam. When Sam wouldn't stop giggling at 'kit and gabe- oodle ' Gabriel pressed his hips into Sam's and Sam, still smiling, spread his knees complacently. Gabriel rolled his hips once and Sam sighed, wrapping his hands around Gabriel's back, his teasing smile becoming one of comfortable affection. Gabriel leaned down to kiss him.

Sam's cellphone rang.

"That's probably Dean." He said, reluctantly rolling over to get his phone. Gabriel began to politely slide off of him, But Sam wrapped a leg around the slender waist of his lover and shook his head, making an expression that said, quite clearly, if Gabriel moved away, Sam would find a way to kick his ass. The archangel grinned before smiling and sliding down between Sam's knees.

"Hey, bro, what's up?"

"Ok, what are you doing?" came his brother's gruff reply, "I see you sneak out at one am, don't ask questions. I'm a live and let live kinda guy. But now, it's almost five, and you 1. Aren't here and 2. Are calling me 'bro' which almost exclusively happens when you are doing something shifty."

Half of Sam wished that he had let Gabriel slip away. The other half was buzzing in ecstasy as the archangel slid Sam's cock into his mouth. Really, what had he expected?

"Sammy, you listening to me? We gotta jet. You were on vacation at the time, but one time Cas and I managed to trap Raphael. We summoned him and locked him and I bet with some ingenuity and holy oil we can do the same to Gabriel."

Sam wasn't sure if Gabriel dropped Sam's cock out of his mouth because he heard Dean's voice on the other line or if it was because when Sam heard Dean talk about hunting Gabriel, he went soft. Sam guessed the former because suddenly Gabriel was standing and sliding into his jeans.

"Sammy, I swear to god, say something before I get in my car and hunt you down. I have GPS and I'm not afraid to use it."

"No, yeah, sorry Dean, I'm here." Sam said quickly. Gabriel was buttoning his shirt. "Motel room in about twenty minutes sound good? Ok, gotta go, bye." Said Sam and he hung up without waiting for Dean to respond. Gabriel had shrugged on his coat and was making his way to the door.

"Gabriel, stop. Stop." Called Sam, shoving himself in front of the door, blocking the angel's exit. Gabriel was running.

"Twenty minutes is pretty ambitious, Sam." Said Gabriel, coldly "You're going to have to leave now if you're going to make it there in time."

"Gabriel, I—"

"Nothing has changed, Sam. I can't kill my brother. I can't…"

And there it was.

Sam didn't know what he had been expecting. He was top for once so Gabriel would suddenly jump up and join the war on his behalf? Sam said 'I love you' so now Gabriel was going to turn his back on a million and some odd years of neutrality? It wasn't a surprise but it hurt, nonetheless. It hurt to watch the man you love step aside and let his family, his beliefs, his cowardice kill you.

"What about me?" asked Sam, "Why do I have to do this?"

"Don't make me choose between you and my family, Sam." Said Gabriel, "It isn't fair. It isn't fair to you or me or anybody but it is written. This was always how it was always going to be. I'm tired of waiting for the war to come and go. I just want to know who to mourn and who to follow so it can just end. I can't choose between you and my brothers."

"It sounds like you already have." Said Sam coldly, stepping away from where he blocked Gabriel's exit from the church.

When he looked back over his shoulder, Gabriel was gone.

And Sam still loved him.

********

"Ok, so, game plan," said Dean from the driver's seat of the Impala, "We get to Bobby's, we call Cas, we scout out a nice remote barn or something, trap Gabriel there. We can make him help us or we can make him talk and if he's going to be a smart ass about it, I might just follow through with that idea on angel deep-fry."

Dean looked back over at Sam and let out a great sigh.

"Damn it, Sam, you've said three words since we left Wellington. You're not hungover, I know what you look like hungover. Are you mad at me? Is that it?"

"No, Dean. I'm not mad at you" Sam lied.

"Yes you are. Those are your mad-at-me-forehead-crinkles."

"It isn't all about you, Dean."

"Well, if you're going to be a pissy little bitch and not tell me whatever I did that got you all wound up then fine. Sit on it." Dean snapped. "Does this have something to do with where you were from the hours of one and five this morning?"

"No, Dean." Sam lied.

"Sam. Should I be worried?"

"For fucks sake, would you drop it?" barked Sam and Dean just leveled a cautious glare out of the corner of his eye. "Fine, you want to know where I was? With a guy, alright? Sucking cock and sticking my dick up their ass and all sorts of other faggy queer stuff, got it? And then we fought because you fucking called and now…"

"First of all, I've never called you faggy or queer or any of that shit, so don't throw in my face like I did. Second of all you fought? So, you didn't pick up some dude at a bar then? Is this that guy who didn't call you for like, a year? It is. Fuck, Sam, every time you see him you get all moody and tense and maybe it isn't the best guy for you."

"Relationship advice from the man who's never had a girlfriend longer than a Metallica song. Rich."

"Let's play the quiet game, huh?" sniped Dean. This had all the makings of a world class bickering match so Dean turned up the radio and stared at the road like it was new. Sam reached forward and turned the music down.

"I think we should focus on something else for a little while."

"Good idea. Let's change the subject."

"No, that isn't what I meant. I don't think we should hunt Gabriel down."

"You're kidding, right? We need that sword thingy that Cas said will kill an archangel. It has to be one of their own blades. Look, wanna go ask Raphael? He's already snuggled nice and cozy to Michael. Gabriel's the only one we have a popsicle's chance in Hell of convincing."

"He's had thousands of years to mull it over, I don't think we can say anything to change his mind."

"Fine. We'll kill him then."

"Dean, lets just leave him alone." said Sam. He sighed when Dean shot him a suspicious look, "Remember what he put us through as the Trickster? I'm thinking he was using the kiddie gloves on us since we were the vessels. You really want to tick that off? You talk about killing him like it would be so easy. How many archangels have we killed, Dean? A big fat zero."

"If we don't do this, would it knock the stick out of your ass?"

"What?"

"We walk away from this idea, you gonna still be a little bitch or are you going to go back to being Sammy?"

"Stick, right out of my ass. You got it."

"Then we walk away." Said Dean with a shrug. He didn't look happy about it, but he didn't push the issue. Sometimes Dean was full of surprises.

"Hey, Dean?"

"Yeah, Sam."

"I'm sorry I said all that."

"You were kinda right, though. Never had a girlfriend, really. Sorry I said that about your guy. I don't know him. I don't know anything about your relationship."

"It's over this time. Over for good. I still love him but… we're too different. Or maybe we're too the similar. Irreconcilable similarities, I guess you could call it."

******************

Gabriel was scared.

His family, his lover and his friends were all cuddled together in a big clusterfuck of bad idea and he knew, he just knew his cover was going to get blown tonight.

"Always wrong place, worst time with you, mutton heads, isn't it?" he asked as he looked between the brothers, forcing his eyes to stay on Sam only as long as absolutely necessary. Sam was scared too. That didn't help.

With a snap of his fingers, he sent the Winchesters to a safe room while he glanced around the room at his friends. He considered them friends. They probably considered him a bit odd. But they had been there for him.

Odin was the one who had helped him adopt his disguise. Gabriel was tired of running from his brothers when the Norse god, the true Loki, had stumbled upon him. Gabriel killed him and began to mask his power and his grace to look like a lower level god, one who wouldn't attract too much attention. When Odin found him he took a long look at Gabriel and Gabriel knew that Odin saw the disguise. He didn't think that Odin knew exactly what he was, but Odin could tell he wasn't Loki.

He shrugged.

When Baldur got a little too close to sniffing out Loki's body, Odin intercepted him and sent him off in the wrong direction. Odin looked right at Gabriel and said, "Loki always was a prat anyways." And that was the only time that they had ever talked about it.

Kali was the first goddess that Gabriel had ever had sex with. It was intimidating to say the least and to this day he wasn't sure if he did a good job.

She had seen him staring as he passed through Kashmir and she stopped talking to the god she was talking with. She turned down a narrow hallway and glanced at him over her shoulder. That was all the invitation he was going to get.

When he got there, she was naked facing away from the door and Gabriel stripped, pressing his naked form against the back of hers. She purred and moved against him. She turned and fell back onto a bed of pillows, watching him with cool eyes, as though wondering when he was going to get to it and worship her human form.

So he did so. Gladly.

After they both came, she stroked a finger along his arm and looked him over thoughtfully.

"You're very complicated." She said simply, and Gabriel didn't know if that was good or bad.

A century later, he ran across her again as he and Eshu wrecked havoc on a British CEO who was caught lying about who made the products his company sold. Only a monster would argue that he thought nine-year-old Filipino sweatshop workers were "fair trade." When Loki let him fall off of a eighty story building, Kali looked over him with cool eyes and shrugged. "Woah, she really likes you." Said Eshu, whom Kali had ignored altogether.

"I'm here to save your ass." Gabriel sneered at Dean as Sam tried his best to look small in the background. "The end is still nigh. Michael and Lucifer are still gonna dance the lambada, but not tonight. Not here."

"Why do you care?"

Gabriel's eyes betrayed him as they skimmed over Dean's head to Sam.

"I don't care." He said, "But me and Kali… we had a thing."

Sam looked at him with tortured eyes and Gabriel knew. He knew that Sam knew that Kali wasn't the issue here. It was Sam. It had always been Sam, and Gabriel wasn't going to sit aside and let Lucifer take him right in front of him.

"What can I say?" asked Gabriel, his eyes landing on Sam in a way that even Dean had to notice. "I'm sentimental."

Even as he went to steal the blood, the shackle of his lover, Gabriel admired the look of her.

Kali's naked back was a familiar sight. Her tone was still the cool one he remembered and she called Baldur 'uncomplicated.' Gabriel still didn't know if that was good or bad.

She wanted to fight. Gabriel was ready to get the Hell out of dodge and she sealed her own death as she told him that she would end the world. Not them.

And Gabriel was starting to realize that he could run.

But he would be running alone.

Kali shoved a knife in his heart and he died in a chair, surrounded by his friends. Or so they thought.

Dean glared at him from the front seat of the Impala.

"You think I'd give Kali my real sword? That thing can kill me." Said Gabriel, "So, uh, go snag our blood, would ya?"

"No. Hand over the real blade." Said Dean coldly. "Better yet, why don't you sack up and help us take down Lucifer."

"You can't be serious."

"Deadly."

"Since when heave you been butt buddies with a bunch of monsters? That's all they are to you, aren't they?"

"You know what? Sammy's right, it's nuts but it's the best idea I've heard, so unless you got a better one—"

Gabriel grinned coldly and shook his head, strumming his hands on the back seat of the Impala. If only Dean knew the truth about him and 'Sammy.' If only Dean knew that it was Gabriel who called him 'Sammy' on lonely nights. If only Dean knew how Gabriel sat back and watched Sam kill himself.

The easiest way for Gabriel to feel like a coward was for someone to bring up Sam.

"You're the guy." Said Dean suddenly, and Gabriel gave him a cold glare. This seemed to confirm Dean's assumption. "You're the guy, and you're about to let Sam be a poker chip? You're the guy Sam loved and you're just gonna let him?"

"I'm the thing that was fucking your brother. That's what he gets for falling into bed with monsters, right? We aren't exactly on our honeymoon or anything, so don't make it more than it was. If that lemming wants to run off a cliff, fine. Me? I'm blowing Jonestown."

"I see right through you, you know that? The smart-ass shell, the whole I-couldn't-give-a-crap thing. Believe me, it takes one to know one. And you know what? Sammy and those freaks in there? They aren't your blood but they are your family. You still give a crap about them. You still love him."

"He broke up with me. He fucking broke my heart."

"Yeah, well, he's going to die in there without you. "

And there it was.

Gabriel had no idea what took him so long, because there it was. The reason he ran. Sam was going to die, but Gabriel could save him. Gabriel could alter fate, he could pick up his blade and make Michael and Lucifer listen. This wasn't just between them. They had no right dragging Gabriel into it. They had no right putting Sam through the shredder so he would fit some criteria for Lucifer's stupid, poetic and nobly bloody demands. Sam didn't deserve that. Nobody deserved that.

"Dean—" started Gabriel, "I can't kill my brother."

"Can't or won't?" snapped Dean, all sympathy missing from his tone. Gabriel couldn't blame him. Dean had to kill his brother because some angels, who couldn't give two shits about the humans they were fucking with, couldn't sit down and talk it out. Dean had to kill and Gabriel had to pick a side because of an overgrown family spat.

No. He was done. Gabriel couldn't watch families tear themselves apart anymore.

Last time he ran. Gabriel was getting tired of running alone.

********

Sam and Dean were hiding behind an overturned table as Kali threw fire at Lucifer. Last god standing and the flames slid off Lucifer like water, but, hey, what could be expected from someone who called Hell their home?

Sam looked to his brother, quickly assessing any damage.

"You ok?" he asked.

"Not really." Came Gabriel's flat voice from behind Dean. "Hey," he said, smiling sadly over Dean to Sam. "Better late than never, right?"

He thrust a DVD into Dean's hand and then disappeared around the table. Lucifer was thrust into the hall as Gabriel helped his friend to her feet. She was shaking from her spent energy. Kali, goddess of destruction and feminine strength and all its great and terrible beauty, did not take kindly to being saved by men. Especially angels dressed up as men. She clung to his arm, so Gabriel knew that she was badly hurt.

"Lucy," called Gabriel, "I'm home."

Lucifer rolled his shoulders to step forward and throw Gabriel into next week for being disloyal. He had done it before and the last time, Gabriel had cowered, letting Lucifer hurt him for not loving him enough before he ran and hid.

"Not this time," said Gabriel, lifting his blade. "Guys," he called over his shoulder, "Get her out of here."

Sam and Dean hastened to obey, Dean grabbing one of Kali's arms while Sam took her from Gabriel. It was a second, at most, but Sam's fingers grazed Gabriel's without any disguise and he looked down at him. Words were forming on his lips and Gabriel didn't have time to hear them.

So Gabriel fixed him with the most loaded look he could give. An apology for running, for being so far up his own ass, hiding from his bully brothers that he let Sam take the brunt of the hit. And a confession of flawed, complicated, but completely unconditional love.

It was all he had to give, so Gabriel gave it, every ounce of it, to Sam.

"For a human?" sneered Lucifer, breaking Gabriel's train of thought, "I mean, I knew you were slumming it… but I hope you didn't catch anything."

"Lucifer," said Gabriel, "You're my brother, and I love you, but you're a great big bag of dicks."

Lucifer raised his brow and Gabriel knew that the only reason that Lucifer didn't stab a blade into his heart for that was because his got confiscated when he went to his time-out in Hell's cage.

"Look at yourself," snapped Gabriel, "Daddy doesn't love me best anymore, so I'm going to smash all his toys. All this is just a great big temper tantrum. Time to grow up. And this isn't about Michael," said Gabriel as Lucifer opened his mouth to interrupt. Gabriel wasn't having it. He hid for millennia while Michael and Lucifer talked and talked and talked about war and killing each other and right and wrong, Heaven and Hell. So Lucifer could listen to him for five fucking minutes. Sam loved Gabriel and the love of an imperfect human made Gabriel stronger than Michael or Lucifer or Heaven or 'righteousness' ever could. "If Michael were here, I'd shiv his ass too."

"You disloyal-," Lucifer scoffed.

"Oh, I'm loyal. To him."

"Who? These so-called-gods?"

"No, to people, Lucifer. People. Like Sam."

"So you're wiling to die for a pile of cockroaches? Why?"

"Because Daddy was right. They are better than us."

"They are broken flawed abortions."

"Damn right they're flawed, " said Gabriel. He took a long inhale as he thought of Sam. Sam who would get mad and stubborn. Sam who never thought he was good enough. Sam who couldn't tell the difference between love and hate until the very end. "But a lot of them try… to do better."

Oh, how Sam tried.

"They try to forgive. To believe. Even when we, "Gabriel gestured with his blade to include Lucifer in this too, "don't deserve it. Look at yourself. Look at me. You call us perfect? We're all broken. The difference is that they try. So I'm not on your side. I'm not on Michael's side. I'm on his. I'm on theirs."

Time to grow up.

If anything was worth dying for, it was that flawed love from that flawed human. Gabriel didn't deserve any better. Gabriel didn't want any better, because with Sam, it was unconditional.

Time to make a stand for once in his existence because Sam made him worth something more than a pawn in their war. Sam made him something more than their brother. Sam loved him. Sam loved him, Sam loved him, Sam loved him.

And even as Gabriel died, the sting of his own blade didn't hurt so bad because Sam made him more than skin and bones and blood. Skin could be marred with acne and scars. Bones could break and blood could be spilt but Sam's love?

For all the powers of Heaven and Hell, Michael and Lucifer didn't stand a chance against that.

******

**EPILOGUE**

Dean leaned against the hood of the Impala as he wordlessly handed Sam Gabriel's DVD. Sam took it with shaking hands and all he felt were Dean's eyes on him. He hazarded a glance up. Sam knew every conceivable facial expression his brother could scrunch his features into. This was the your-lover-just-died-and-I-don't-know-how-to-comfo rt-you face. That face he had seen for a month after Jess. The face he had seen for a week after Madison.

Sam hated the fact that he could even recognize that expression.

Sam raised his eyebrows as if to ask, so, you know. Dean cleared his throat, all but saying, yeah, I know. Sam licked his lips and looked at his hands, do your worst, go ahead and judge me. Dean sighed and shifted his weight, looking over the Impala at nothing in particular. He wasn't so bad after all. Dean clapped his hand on Sam's back as his brother inserted the DVD into his laptop. That was all the hand holding, grief counseling, caring-sharing therapy moment Sam was ever going to get from Dean and it was all he needed because he knew it all Dean had to give.

Sam wanted to vomit as he saw Gabriel pawing at the vapid bleached pornstar in the video. He didn't know what to expect, since a lover's heart to heart seemed like a bit much. No, it looked like Gabriel was going to use his last words to make Sam jealous, just because he could. Sam had thought that the archangel was more than his petty Trickster getup.

He'd been wrong before.

Then, Gabriel pushed the little blonde tramp (was she twelve?) away and Sam smiled.

"Sam. Dean. You're probably wondering what the hell is going on."

He peeled off that ridiculous moustache and turned to the camera in that way that was entirely Gabriel, with a pouty pornstar in the back and a bunch of sarcasm. Gabriel would never be vulnerable. Gabriel would never be weak and mushy and for some reason, Sam liked it this way. This was Gabriel, hard, slick, teasing, genuine Gabriel and Sam loved every minute of it.

"So, can't say I'm betting on you boys, but, hey, I've been wrong before." Sam did let loose a smile at that one and no amount of sideways glances from his brother could wipe it off his face.

"So," said Gabriel, standing up, "Big Winchester, look away. Baby Winchester, get ready for a wild ride."

With a snap of his fingers, Casa Erotica became dim lit and a fireplace appeared out of nowhere on the side of the screen.

"Take a hike, toots." Said Gabriel dismissively and the blonde woman made no secret of her displeasure as she was ejected from the room. With a snap of his fingers, Ginuwine's "Pony" came though the speakers and Gabriel started shaking his hips and licking his lips in an overtly ridiculous way. With a wink, he started unbuttoning his white shirt, shimmying it off for all he was worth. He ripped his pants off and started wiggling his junk. That was the last straw for Dean who, had not looked away when prompted by Gabriel, but definitely did this time.

Sam laughed, because that was all he could do.

He had hated himself enough. He wanted to laugh. He needed to laugh. Gabriel turned around and bent over, shaking his ass in a way that was only asking for one thing and Sam felt his eyes mist over.

He was crying and laughing and loving and missing and he knew that Gabriel loved him. He had always known that Gabriel loved him. It was the most confusing striptease known to man or angel and Sam watched it again that night. Then again the next day.

It was wildly inappropriate. It was Gabriel.

And Sam still loved him.


End file.
